I've been involved in a kind of hacky system to record the orientation of the geomagnetic field in specific places using fluid-based granular deposition. Given the right conditions you get a nice, long, highly detailed record of geomagnetic orientation, and even intensity under some circumstances. Similar systems exist for making these recordings in subaerial environments (the Chinese have an extensive one, which for some reason they call Loess), as well as recording in assemblages of crystals formed from extrusive melts.
It's kind of a pain to recover the data and put it into a usable format - you've got to use a really precise magnetometer to measure the orientation of the bulk magnetic material in the recovered column (actually, you measure magnetic flux using SQUIDs in each of three component directions and then process these directions to determine the combined direction/intensity at a given horizon), and really you need to use one of several progressive demagnetization techniques to remove newer overprinting and recover the true orientation data. The oldest archives I've personally recovered go back about 500k years, although tens and hundreds of millions of years are possible and published, though these records are usually pretty spotty.
So... now we should be concerned because the magnetic pole is "rapidly" heading towards the geographic pole? Oh noes!
It is somewhat interesting that it is moving around pretty quickly, but it would be much more interesting if the magnetic pole was headed south instead; a little geomagnetic excursion from time to time is a healthy thing, don't you think?
On the plus side, the declination printed on all those USGS sectionals should be getting more accurate again...
EMP is no hazard to elctrical machinery and high power electronics (besides, it'll all be inside the steel ship). It damages low power systems such as controls and computers and is particularly dangerous to radio and radar systems since they must connect to unshielded antennas and handle weak signals.
If you get hit by an EMP pulse big enough to damage switching devices capable of handling 135MW your decks will be melting.
That, and I'm not sure I'd trust my aircraft's avionics after such a hit...
Where fighter and bombers get all the glory there are a few equally important heavy aircraft that need catapults to launch:
AEW: Aircraft such as the the E-2 Hawkeye http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_E-2_Hawkeye are critical to hiding the location of the fleet. If the enemy sees a ship based radar they know where the ship and usually the fleet is. If they see an airborne radar the fleet could be very far away. Also airborne radar can see further.
COD; Carier Onboad Delivery, Need those critical parts or personel delivered outside of helicopter range? Need to evacuate critically injured personnel? You need a long range aircraft to do it.
Tankers; Need to extend range to a target? Need to loiter for long periods on CAP. Need a sip of fuel to get back to the carrier because you used to much afterburners in the fight? Tankers are your friend. This role is currently done in the US Navy by the F/A-18E/F http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F/A-18E/F_Super_Hornet#Tanker_role
Without catapults none of these aircraft would get off the deck.
All true; however, assuming Wikipedia is correct, the F/A-18 Super Hornet actually appears to be the heaviest carrier-based aircraft currently operational at about 30 metric tons (max takeoff). The F-14 was heavier at ~ 34 tons, and the F-35C will be about 32 tons. The E-2C (and C-2) max out at around 25 metric tons (the S-3 Viking, also out of service, was about the same weight); I'm not aware of any other large aircraft that operate off of carriers. The heaviest ever that I can find was the F-111B at about 40 tons, but only 7 of those were built and they never entered service (only flight testing from carriers).
What makes you think that 6.3 g is too much? Sustaining 6.3 g for 1.75 seconds along the vertical axis is well within the capabilities expected from a fighter pilot. Moreover, the acceleration when catapult-launching a plane is along the horizontal axis which is much better tolerated. Untrained humans are able to tolerate 17 g eyeballs-in for several minutes without loss of consciousness or apparent long-term harm.
That said, you are right about the 240mph actually being 240km/h. From the pdf file: "The complete EMALS system will use a 300-ft long LIM to accelerate a 100,000-lb (45,000-kg) aircraft to more than 130 knots (67m/sec) and lighter aircraft to 200 knots (100m/sec)". 130 knots is almost exactly 140km/h. However, 45 metric tons is about twice the weight of a typical fighter plane, and I believe the stall speed of jet fighters is significantly higher than 240km/h, especially when loaded. Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that the 200knots (130mpg or 370km/h) is for fighter planes, which would correspond to an acceleration of roughly 6 g.
Also remember, during the majority of launch operations carriers are moving. So, that 130 knots from the catapult is added to the speed of the carrier (not sure if they go full speed during launch operations; assume 20 kts or so to be safe) giving 150 knots. Launch operations are almost always conducted into the wind, so that provides another few knots air speed for free. Basically, even before catapult launch an aircraft might have an airspeed of 20 or 30 knots just sitting on the deck.
The F/A-18 Super Hornet actually has some pretty advanced systems for increasing low-speed lift at the cost of increased drag (they aren't really designed for clean, top speed) which as a helpful byproduct decreases stall speed. I wouldn't be surprised if the stall speed even fully loaded is in the 130 knot range, although obviously you want to be going faster than that to provide some cushion. Fully loaded you're looking at about 31-32 metric tons fully loaded, so they aren't real light, but likely they can be launched significantly faster than 130 kts.
On a side note, looking at naval aircraft on Wikipedia it looks like there isn't really anything operational heavier than the Super Hornets - the heaviest I see is the F-14 at about 34 metric tons max takeoff (now out of service); I thought the E-2C or S-3 (the latter now also out of service) would be heavier, but they only come in around 25 tons. So right now there really doesn't seem to be any aircraft heavier than the Super Hornet landing and taking off from carriers (the F-35C will be slightly heavier), so saying these fighters are the "light" aircraft mentioned doesn't really make sense.
I wonder how many thousands of snipped-up credit cards (along with a final payment, if necessary)it would take to persuade MasterCard that they are being stupid. I wish I could say I used them so I could be one of them.
I don't think MasterCard cares about the final payment, actually... they only process the payments, they don't issue the credit. The bank you owe money to would probably be upset, though.
The way to handle this is to randomize the ads, so the only way a Coca-Cola ad shows up on a page about Coca-Cola (or Pepsi for that matter) is by coincidence, instead of allowing Coca-Cola to sponsor a page.
That's my thought as well. No selling ads to specific articles, just something like x% of articles served will include your ad in a dedicated ad block that is in identical position on all articles regardless of content. Anything else and there is way to much motivation to modify specific articles to trigger more traffic. Maybe even just a small tag at the top of each page, something telling the user "This article brought to you by x". Yes, Coca Cola might get pissed off a little bit if a Pepsi ad accompanies their article, but if the model is straightforward and everyone understands what is happening they probably wouldn't mind too much.
Of course, I have no idea what such untargeted ads would be worth, but given the popularity of Wikipedia I'd think you could cover a good chunk of operating costs.
I need a plugin that blocks comments on slashdot and other forums where people mention how great it is that they use Ad Block.
We get it. Everyone here knows this technology exists. Some of us choose not to use it. There are half a dozen posts saying "Put up ads! I won't see them! I run Ad Block Plus!" on this article, and only 50 comments total.
You folks made a choice to opt out of the ad model, but reap the rewards of content that ads pay for anyway. I get that, and hopefully you do too. But why are you folks all so damn vocal about it? It's as if you're smug about blocking ads, and I honestly don't know why you would be smug about that.
I tend to use Adblock, mostly because the adservers always seem to be so abysmally slow - on many sites no content loads until the ads do, and they often take forever (not due to bandwidth limitations, just because the ad servers seem to take so long to respond a lot of the time). I would disable adblock immediately if websites took the responsibility to host the ads themselves, or at least require some sort of minimal responsiveness from the companies they contract with to serve up the ads. I generally try to unblock websites I like that have decent performance (although saying that I just noticed that there don't seem to be any ads visible here... oops), but I think it is reasonable to expect ad-based websites to ensure the ads they show do not actively deteriorate the service they are offering. An example that pops off the top of my head is Anandtech - love the site, they have great in-depth information, but for years they had an abysmal ad-server; more often than not when trying to read an article I would have to wait for the ad server to respond, in the meantime looking at content-free pages as it was set up so the article content doesn't load until after the ads. I'm happy to see ads from Newegg and Gigabyte etc. when browsing articles on a tech site, but not if there is a 30-second delay every time I look at an article while the ad server takes its own good time to get around to serving the ad.
I wouldn't mind ads on wikipedia, as long as advertisers are barred from requesting ads on specific articles. "Genres" of articles might be okay, but I think it creates a major conflict to have advertisers targeting specific articles on a publicly-editable website. There would be a strong motivation for advertisers to cross-reference as many articles as possible to their targeted articles, and modify content to bring in more viewers. Banning targeted ads might decrease the advertising rate, but I think given the traffic Wikipedia gets they'd be able to find enough advertisers to cover costs. Ads don't automatically destroy the credibility of the website, although there do have to be clear rules set up. The main danger would be becoming too dependent on one or a few advertisers, in which case those advertisers might develop leverage to get things changed. Of course, once you start selling ads it gets really hard to sell anyone on making donations, so it would likely be an all-or-nothing endeavor.
And additionally, whether you believe it's "right" or not, Netflix can only do what it does because there are copy protection mechanisms in place to ensure respect of the copyrights of the material they are displaying.
There might be a way to create an open source Netflix client that respects copyright, but it would be difficult (technologically, and perhaps legally depending on the license you're using), and it would be a hard sell to the copyright owners.
Licensing problems? So did that idiocy banning people from writing certain kinds of software not approved of by RMS actually make it into the final GPLv3? I vaguely remember that discussion, but assumed it had been dropped since I haven't heard anything about it lately. The astonishing hypocrisy of some in the so-called free software movement just makes me shake my head from time to time.
In ties, the lower court's ruling is upheld IIRC. Kagan had to recuse.
I don't think so; IIRC, it's not overturned but doesn't form binding precedent on the other circuits either. I think we'll see this one back in the Supreme Court at some point relatively soon.
That agrees with another article I read yesterday (sorry, don't recall where I saw it and don't have time to search right now...). The 4-4 split means that the lower court ruling remains intact, but does not apply to the other circuits. So I don't think there can be another challenge coming from that particular circuit, but I would expect challenges from other circuits in the future.
If you are in an area remote enough to need a sat phone, chances are whoever you can get hold of with one isn't going to be able to help you.
I had friends in grad school that did research in remote parts of China and other areas in Central Asia. The first couple of seasons each one would always rent a sat phone "for safety". Then they realized that anyone they got hold of on the phone would need to make the same week-long journey by truck from the nearest medical facility that they had made, which would probably not be helpful in an emergency. It was kind of cool being able to send them free text messages, though (don't remember what company it was, but it had a web-based portal so people could send text messages to the handsets as capacity and connection allowed).
That, and working in China in particular the authorities were often not over-pleased with their work anyway; something like a satellite phone that allowed you to pass information out of western China without going through government-controlled channels was not looked on in a good light, particularly when said person also has tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of GPS and LiDAR equipment with them. It does kind of shout SPY! even if they had been collaborating with Chinese researchers on geologic work for years beforehand and had secured all the proper permits (funny how permit requirements can change at a moment's notice in China, even while working with locals of good standing; one friend had to abandon some very expensive borrowed equipment after being detained by the local/provincial government and being informed by the US consulate upon his release that they advised him to leave as quickly as possible as they expected the national government to be putting out an arrest order for him; he literally took the first flight out of China departing from the city he was in, which took him I think to Kazakhstan; he was later informed he was no longer welcome to visit China, and basically had to start his PhD research over three years in using a new site. They did eventually give the equipment back, which we think was probably the whole point of the exercise - they just wanted to take a look at this cool new toy; the local government had basically been demanding a kickback for bringing it into the country, then released him when it was clear he wasn't in a position to pay anything; it is likely that the PLA gained some fancy new mapping hardware from the whole deal).
In brief terms how laws in the US pass? I thought it started from the senate, and the president has veto rights.
But now Judges can mess with the laws?
Thanks in advance.
Simple (ish). Legislature passes the laws (separate versions are introduced in the House and Senate, then if they pass both they go to a committee to be reconciled so they are the same). The president can then choose to sign the law (accept it), or veto it (though at times he has had the power to veto only parts of a law; currently I believe it is all or nothing). If he vetoes it, the law can still be passed if the legislature musters the requisite majority to overturn the veto (I think 2/3). The law then goes into effect on whatever date was specified.
However, in the U.S. we have a third branch, the Judicial branch, the primary purpose of which is to determine whether the laws passed are actually legal. That is, that the passed law does not conflict with the supreme law of the land, the Constitution. If a law is challenged, and the Judicial branch (supreme court) finds that the law is in conflict with the constitution, it is invalidated. They don't alter the law; they merely determine whether it is legal or not.
Now, theoretically the legislature could then go back and amend the Constitution, with the concurrence of the States (I think 3/4 of state legislatures must approve any amendment to the federal constitution), but that is exceedingly rare (it has happened 27 times so far).
Yes, Enron was a company that did a lot of bad stuff, but if the government of California had actually deregulated the market instead of setting up the worst of both worlds (all the problems of deregulation combined with all of the problems of regulation and none of the benefits of either) they would not have been successful at what they did (of course what's fun is that the same people who are quick to point out how evil Enron was are often the same people who are pushing one of Enron's worst--or best, if you are a crooked company like Enron--idea: CO2 Cap and Trade).
While the deregulation would have kept regulation of the transport side of things, it was basically the large power companies in California that caused the failure. Enron and the like certainly helped, but they just took advantage of the situation created by the major power companies here in California. These companies (PG&E, Southern Edison, a few others) collectively decided they hated the idea of any deregulation, and during the peak periods of demand following deregulation took unusually large portions of their power generating facilities off-line for "scheduled maintenance". Something like 25% of power plants in California were taken off-line at the same time, not in response to any emergency but in order to create a scheduled shortage. This lead to the famous rolling brownouts, which were their goal - scare the public into thinking that deregulation would cause the power supply to fail. This semi-backfired for them, as they were then forced by the state to purchase large amounts of power to alleviate the shortages - which again, they knew was likely to happen going in. What they didn't count on was the manipulation by Enron and the like to massively increase the rates they had to pay for importing power to make up for their self-inflicted shortages. Instead of the perhaps tens of millions they expected the stunt to cost them in the short-term, it ended up costing billions and all of a sudden they were in real trouble.
Yes, there were clear shortcomings in the way "deregulation" occurred that probably should have been foreseen. However, if you look into what actually happened during that period it is pretty clear that the major California power companies manipulated the market in order to discredit deregulation (which they saw as hurting profitability in the long-run as it opened them to competition), then got gut-checked by another company manipulating the market at their expense.
Spore is a bad example, because it actually is a crappy game.
But yeah, there have been numerous examples of things getting massive numbers of bad reviews fro things like DRM. If you are actually thinking about buying something, hopefully you have the sense to look past the simple star rating and read some of the reviews; it becomes immediately obvious if the rating is based on the actual merits of the product, or if people are just giving bad ratings to protest some action by the company.
A bunch of angry idiots decide to have themselves a little riot, do some burning and head-cracking, and so far hardly a comment questioning whether this is in any way appropriate? I don't like the efforts to destroy/discredit Wikileaks any more than most here, but I hope the perpetrators of these "retaliatory" crimes feel the full weight of the law coming down on them. Absolutely disgusting to be violently attacking a business because that business made a decision that you disagree with. I have no patience or sympathy for these criminals (and I'm about out of patience with the fucktards who call themselves Anonymous).
You want to call a boycott? Fine. I might even join you. But the second you start attacking them and doing damage, you have crossed the line and deserve to be thrown in jail. There is no valid reason for this, just a bunch of thugs looking for some amusement.
Sure... as soon as Reporters Without Borders is able to put up some information on how they score the countries. Oh, sure, they show what the questionnaire they sent out was, they say how many points each questions is worth, but they don't actually show how each Nation got the score it did. If you look at their "country files", they don't even offer any information on most of the top scorers (well, bottom scorers, I guess).
You'd think a group dedicated to a free and transparent press would at least give the background on their ratings for people interested. But I guess it is enough "freedom and transparency" to assume they know what they are doing, assume they received an adequate number of responses from their anonymous sources to be valid, and to assume that their reported scores aren't biased by different expectations in each of the nations they sent questionnaires to.
Again, I'm not saying their rankings are wrong... they do point out some valid problems in the U.S., for example, which definitely keeps it out of the running for the top spot... but they really don't do a very good job of supporting their rankings in any meaningful way. They are essentially saying, "Trust us. We are Reporters Without Borders... we must be telling the truth."
Hmm, the last couple of times I set up DSL w/ ATT it didn't go anything like your experience.
I don't know if I just got lucky or special circumstances or what, but the last two times we moved it was super easy to set up DSL. Don't remember for sure two places ago, but when we moved into our current house there really wasn't any setup necessary (aside from having to re-wire the phone jack in the office so it would be connected to the correct phone line, but that was pretty simple). Just plugged in the new modem they sent us, ignored their instructions (didn't even look at them) and put our username/password into the modem, plugged the router in and told it to automatically receive IP (none of that annoying PPPoE stuff that we were forced to use way back when...) and everything worked great. No need to install any software on our computer, everything just worked the way it is supposed to.
Had a bit of a flaky connection at first, called AT&T, and the next day they had someone out working on the lines. While they initially thought it was just a bad connection at the local box, they ended up finding a whole mess of bad wiring (on their end, fortunately) and spent the next couple of days re-wiring half our street.
My only complaint over the years has been that we are still limited to very slow uploads - I'm pretty content with our ~5-6 mbps downstream speed, but 384k up is just getting ridiculous.
As Microsoft Security Essentials is offered for free for personal and small business (up to 10-PCs) use, the only reason I can think of to pirate AV software is because you're also pirating Windows and can't pass the WGA validation test. Even then why bother...just use the free version of Avast that doesn't care about WGA validation.
MSE is free, but it is from Microsoft - you need at least one other AV program on your system to check up on it.
In all seriousness, not sure about Avast, but AVG has taken to making it nearly impossible to locate the free version of their AV software. It might actually be easier just to download it from a warez site (and if you are downloading an AV scanner, even if it comes with a virus it will be able to remove it, right? RIGHT???).
It's clear that they can see where the license is used on warez sites without spying. But how do they know what countries the *users* are in, and how do they push the advertising to them? Inquiring minds want to know!
Presumably the software checks back in for virus definition updates and such periodically once somebody installed it, regardless of source. AV software is pretty useless if it isn't kept up to date; not too surprising they track by software key, then just run a lookup on the IP that requested the update.
Sandstorm + Solar Array = Highly-polished metal stumps
Nah, you just have to make sure you lay down concrete pads on the rock outcrops before you build the solar panels on them, that way they are automatically protected from the harsh environment of Arrak-, er, I mean, the Sahara.
I'm curious as to what NASA has to do with this, Mono Lake being in California and all.
Yeah, everybody knows NASA is only supposed to spend money in Florida, Texas, and Utah.
They actually do quite a bit of geomicrobiological research, basically looking for interesting forms of life and resulting geologic structures as a way of informing the extraterrestrial search for life. If you can't even be sure you know the signs of the presence of life on Earth, how are you going to know whether you have found signs of life on Mars?
It should have jacked up the prices until it is back in the black and seriously considered 3 instead of this move. Level3 used to have good lawyers at least at some point. Back around 2000 they managed to twist the arms of Sprint, Ebone, MCI and other major players that were way more entrenched than Comcast. So winding it up so it lends a hand to FCC to do a competition case was a really really really bad move.
According to their 2009 annual report, they are already in the black. By a fair bit. As much as Netflix streaming has probably grown in the last year, I really don't think it ate up $3.6 billion in additional bandwidth costs.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been involved in a kind of hacky system to record the orientation of the geomagnetic field in specific places using fluid-based granular deposition. Given the right conditions you get a nice, long, highly detailed record of geomagnetic orientation, and even intensity under some circumstances. Similar systems exist for making these recordings in subaerial environments (the Chinese have an extensive one, which for some reason they call Loess), as well as recording in assemblages of crystals formed from extrusive melts.
It's kind of a pain to recover the data and put it into a usable format - you've got to use a really precise magnetometer to measure the orientation of the bulk magnetic material in the recovered column (actually, you measure magnetic flux using SQUIDs in each of three component directions and then process these directions to determine the combined direction/intensity at a given horizon), and really you need to use one of several progressive demagnetization techniques to remove newer overprinting and recover the true orientation data. The oldest archives I've personally recovered go back about 500k years, although tens and hundreds of millions of years are possible and published, though these records are usually pretty spotty.
Does that count?
So... now we should be concerned because the magnetic pole is "rapidly" heading towards the geographic pole? Oh noes!
It is somewhat interesting that it is moving around pretty quickly, but it would be much more interesting if the magnetic pole was headed south instead; a little geomagnetic excursion from time to time is a healthy thing, don't you think?
On the plus side, the declination printed on all those USGS sectionals should be getting more accurate again...
EMP is no hazard to elctrical machinery and high power electronics (besides, it'll all be inside the steel ship). It damages low power systems such as controls and computers and is particularly dangerous to radio and radar systems since they must connect to unshielded antennas and handle weak signals.
If you get hit by an EMP pulse big enough to damage switching devices capable of handling 135MW your decks will be melting.
That, and I'm not sure I'd trust my aircraft's avionics after such a hit...
Where fighter and bombers get all the glory there are a few equally important heavy aircraft that need catapults to launch:
AEW:
Aircraft such as the the E-2 Hawkeye http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_E-2_Hawkeye are critical to hiding the location of the fleet. If the enemy sees a ship based radar they know where the ship and usually the fleet is. If they see an airborne radar the fleet could be very far away. Also airborne radar can see further.
COD;
Carier Onboad Delivery, Need those critical parts or personel delivered outside of helicopter range? Need to evacuate critically injured personnel? You need a long range aircraft to do it.
Tankers;
Need to extend range to a target? Need to loiter for long periods on CAP. Need a sip of fuel to get back to the carrier because you used to much afterburners in the fight? Tankers are your friend. This role is currently done in the US Navy by the F/A-18E/F http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F/A-18E/F_Super_Hornet#Tanker_role
Without catapults none of these aircraft would get off the deck.
All true; however, assuming Wikipedia is correct, the F/A-18 Super Hornet actually appears to be the heaviest carrier-based aircraft currently operational at about 30 metric tons (max takeoff). The F-14 was heavier at ~ 34 tons, and the F-35C will be about 32 tons. The E-2C (and C-2) max out at around 25 metric tons (the S-3 Viking, also out of service, was about the same weight); I'm not aware of any other large aircraft that operate off of carriers. The heaviest ever that I can find was the F-111B at about 40 tons, but only 7 of those were built and they never entered service (only flight testing from carriers).
What makes you think that 6.3 g is too much? Sustaining 6.3 g for 1.75 seconds along the vertical axis is well within the capabilities expected from a fighter pilot. Moreover, the acceleration when catapult-launching a plane is along the horizontal axis which is much better tolerated. Untrained humans are able to tolerate 17 g eyeballs-in for several minutes without loss of consciousness or apparent long-term harm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-G_training
That said, you are right about the 240mph actually being 240km/h. From the pdf file: "The complete EMALS system will use a 300-ft long LIM to accelerate a 100,000-lb (45,000-kg) aircraft to more than 130 knots (67m/sec) and lighter aircraft to 200 knots (100m/sec)". 130 knots is almost exactly 140km/h. However, 45 metric tons is about twice the weight of a typical fighter plane, and I believe the stall speed of jet fighters is significantly higher than 240km/h, especially when loaded. Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that the 200knots (130mpg or 370km/h) is for fighter planes, which would correspond to an acceleration of roughly 6 g.
Also remember, during the majority of launch operations carriers are moving. So, that 130 knots from the catapult is added to the speed of the carrier (not sure if they go full speed during launch operations; assume 20 kts or so to be safe) giving 150 knots. Launch operations are almost always conducted into the wind, so that provides another few knots air speed for free. Basically, even before catapult launch an aircraft might have an airspeed of 20 or 30 knots just sitting on the deck.
The F/A-18 Super Hornet actually has some pretty advanced systems for increasing low-speed lift at the cost of increased drag (they aren't really designed for clean, top speed) which as a helpful byproduct decreases stall speed. I wouldn't be surprised if the stall speed even fully loaded is in the 130 knot range, although obviously you want to be going faster than that to provide some cushion. Fully loaded you're looking at about 31-32 metric tons fully loaded, so they aren't real light, but likely they can be launched significantly faster than 130 kts.
On a side note, looking at naval aircraft on Wikipedia it looks like there isn't really anything operational heavier than the Super Hornets - the heaviest I see is the F-14 at about 34 metric tons max takeoff (now out of service); I thought the E-2C or S-3 (the latter now also out of service) would be heavier, but they only come in around 25 tons. So right now there really doesn't seem to be any aircraft heavier than the Super Hornet landing and taking off from carriers (the F-35C will be slightly heavier), so saying these fighters are the "light" aircraft mentioned doesn't really make sense.
I wonder how many thousands of snipped-up credit cards (along with a final payment, if necessary)it would take to persuade MasterCard that they are being stupid. I wish I could say I used them so I could be one of them.
I don't think MasterCard cares about the final payment, actually... they only process the payments, they don't issue the credit. The bank you owe money to would probably be upset, though.
wa hapnz wen shtoodinz speeleeng i zoh ba da du splell chexor don wurc rie?
way happens went shoo-ins spieling I zoo bad ad du spell chador don work rye?
4/15 ain't bad! Of course, that made it less readable than the original... but I grade on content, not meaning.
The way to handle this is to randomize the ads, so the only way a Coca-Cola ad shows up on a page about Coca-Cola (or Pepsi for that matter) is by coincidence, instead of allowing Coca-Cola to sponsor a page.
That's my thought as well. No selling ads to specific articles, just something like x% of articles served will include your ad in a dedicated ad block that is in identical position on all articles regardless of content. Anything else and there is way to much motivation to modify specific articles to trigger more traffic. Maybe even just a small tag at the top of each page, something telling the user "This article brought to you by x". Yes, Coca Cola might get pissed off a little bit if a Pepsi ad accompanies their article, but if the model is straightforward and everyone understands what is happening they probably wouldn't mind too much.
Of course, I have no idea what such untargeted ads would be worth, but given the popularity of Wikipedia I'd think you could cover a good chunk of operating costs.
I need a plugin that blocks comments on slashdot and other forums where people mention how great it is that they use Ad Block.
We get it. Everyone here knows this technology exists. Some of us choose not to use it. There are half a dozen posts saying "Put up ads! I won't see them! I run Ad Block Plus!" on this article, and only 50 comments total.
You folks made a choice to opt out of the ad model, but reap the rewards of content that ads pay for anyway. I get that, and hopefully you do too. But why are you folks all so damn vocal about it? It's as if you're smug about blocking ads, and I honestly don't know why you would be smug about that.
I tend to use Adblock, mostly because the adservers always seem to be so abysmally slow - on many sites no content loads until the ads do, and they often take forever (not due to bandwidth limitations, just because the ad servers seem to take so long to respond a lot of the time). I would disable adblock immediately if websites took the responsibility to host the ads themselves, or at least require some sort of minimal responsiveness from the companies they contract with to serve up the ads. I generally try to unblock websites I like that have decent performance (although saying that I just noticed that there don't seem to be any ads visible here... oops), but I think it is reasonable to expect ad-based websites to ensure the ads they show do not actively deteriorate the service they are offering. An example that pops off the top of my head is Anandtech - love the site, they have great in-depth information, but for years they had an abysmal ad-server; more often than not when trying to read an article I would have to wait for the ad server to respond, in the meantime looking at content-free pages as it was set up so the article content doesn't load until after the ads. I'm happy to see ads from Newegg and Gigabyte etc. when browsing articles on a tech site, but not if there is a 30-second delay every time I look at an article while the ad server takes its own good time to get around to serving the ad.
I wouldn't mind ads on wikipedia, as long as advertisers are barred from requesting ads on specific articles. "Genres" of articles might be okay, but I think it creates a major conflict to have advertisers targeting specific articles on a publicly-editable website. There would be a strong motivation for advertisers to cross-reference as many articles as possible to their targeted articles, and modify content to bring in more viewers. Banning targeted ads might decrease the advertising rate, but I think given the traffic Wikipedia gets they'd be able to find enough advertisers to cover costs. Ads don't automatically destroy the credibility of the website, although there do have to be clear rules set up. The main danger would be becoming too dependent on one or a few advertisers, in which case those advertisers might develop leverage to get things changed. Of course, once you start selling ads it gets really hard to sell anyone on making donations, so it would likely be an all-or-nothing endeavor.
Just go on QuatreChan and get Anonyme to threaten a DdSD (déni de service distribué) attack on all of France.
And additionally, whether you believe it's "right" or not, Netflix can only do what it does because there are copy protection mechanisms in place to ensure respect of the copyrights of the material they are displaying.
There might be a way to create an open source Netflix client that respects copyright, but it would be difficult (technologically, and perhaps legally depending on the license you're using), and it would be a hard sell to the copyright owners.
Licensing problems? So did that idiocy banning people from writing certain kinds of software not approved of by RMS actually make it into the final GPLv3? I vaguely remember that discussion, but assumed it had been dropped since I haven't heard anything about it lately. The astonishing hypocrisy of some in the so-called free software movement just makes me shake my head from time to time.
I don't think so; IIRC, it's not overturned but doesn't form binding precedent on the other circuits either. I think we'll see this one back in the Supreme Court at some point relatively soon.
That agrees with another article I read yesterday (sorry, don't recall where I saw it and don't have time to search right now...). The 4-4 split means that the lower court ruling remains intact, but does not apply to the other circuits. So I don't think there can be another challenge coming from that particular circuit, but I would expect challenges from other circuits in the future.
If you are in an area remote enough to need a sat phone, chances are whoever you can get hold of with one isn't going to be able to help you.
I had friends in grad school that did research in remote parts of China and other areas in Central Asia. The first couple of seasons each one would always rent a sat phone "for safety". Then they realized that anyone they got hold of on the phone would need to make the same week-long journey by truck from the nearest medical facility that they had made, which would probably not be helpful in an emergency. It was kind of cool being able to send them free text messages, though (don't remember what company it was, but it had a web-based portal so people could send text messages to the handsets as capacity and connection allowed).
That, and working in China in particular the authorities were often not over-pleased with their work anyway; something like a satellite phone that allowed you to pass information out of western China without going through government-controlled channels was not looked on in a good light, particularly when said person also has tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of GPS and LiDAR equipment with them. It does kind of shout SPY! even if they had been collaborating with Chinese researchers on geologic work for years beforehand and had secured all the proper permits (funny how permit requirements can change at a moment's notice in China, even while working with locals of good standing; one friend had to abandon some very expensive borrowed equipment after being detained by the local/provincial government and being informed by the US consulate upon his release that they advised him to leave as quickly as possible as they expected the national government to be putting out an arrest order for him; he literally took the first flight out of China departing from the city he was in, which took him I think to Kazakhstan; he was later informed he was no longer welcome to visit China, and basically had to start his PhD research over three years in using a new site. They did eventually give the equipment back, which we think was probably the whole point of the exercise - they just wanted to take a look at this cool new toy; the local government had basically been demanding a kickback for bringing it into the country, then released him when it was clear he wasn't in a position to pay anything; it is likely that the PLA gained some fancy new mapping hardware from the whole deal).
They found something useful to do.
Seriously, with all this Wikileaks bullshit I was getting worried Anonymous might have forgotten about the lulz.
In brief terms how laws in the US pass? I thought it started from the senate, and the president has veto rights.
But now Judges can mess with the laws?
Thanks in advance.
Simple (ish). Legislature passes the laws (separate versions are introduced in the House and Senate, then if they pass both they go to a committee to be reconciled so they are the same). The president can then choose to sign the law (accept it), or veto it (though at times he has had the power to veto only parts of a law; currently I believe it is all or nothing). If he vetoes it, the law can still be passed if the legislature musters the requisite majority to overturn the veto (I think 2/3). The law then goes into effect on whatever date was specified.
However, in the U.S. we have a third branch, the Judicial branch, the primary purpose of which is to determine whether the laws passed are actually legal. That is, that the passed law does not conflict with the supreme law of the land, the Constitution. If a law is challenged, and the Judicial branch (supreme court) finds that the law is in conflict with the constitution, it is invalidated. They don't alter the law; they merely determine whether it is legal or not.
Now, theoretically the legislature could then go back and amend the Constitution, with the concurrence of the States (I think 3/4 of state legislatures must approve any amendment to the federal constitution), but that is exceedingly rare (it has happened 27 times so far).
See? Simple.
Yes, Enron was a company that did a lot of bad stuff, but if the government of California had actually deregulated the market instead of setting up the worst of both worlds (all the problems of deregulation combined with all of the problems of regulation and none of the benefits of either) they would not have been successful at what they did (of course what's fun is that the same people who are quick to point out how evil Enron was are often the same people who are pushing one of Enron's worst--or best, if you are a crooked company like Enron--idea: CO2 Cap and Trade).
While the deregulation would have kept regulation of the transport side of things, it was basically the large power companies in California that caused the failure. Enron and the like certainly helped, but they just took advantage of the situation created by the major power companies here in California. These companies (PG&E, Southern Edison, a few others) collectively decided they hated the idea of any deregulation, and during the peak periods of demand following deregulation took unusually large portions of their power generating facilities off-line for "scheduled maintenance". Something like 25% of power plants in California were taken off-line at the same time, not in response to any emergency but in order to create a scheduled shortage. This lead to the famous rolling brownouts, which were their goal - scare the public into thinking that deregulation would cause the power supply to fail. This semi-backfired for them, as they were then forced by the state to purchase large amounts of power to alleviate the shortages - which again, they knew was likely to happen going in. What they didn't count on was the manipulation by Enron and the like to massively increase the rates they had to pay for importing power to make up for their self-inflicted shortages. Instead of the perhaps tens of millions they expected the stunt to cost them in the short-term, it ended up costing billions and all of a sudden they were in real trouble.
Yes, there were clear shortcomings in the way "deregulation" occurred that probably should have been foreseen. However, if you look into what actually happened during that period it is pretty clear that the major California power companies manipulated the market in order to discredit deregulation (which they saw as hurting profitability in the long-run as it opened them to competition), then got gut-checked by another company manipulating the market at their expense.
Spore is a bad example, because it actually is a crappy game.
But yeah, there have been numerous examples of things getting massive numbers of bad reviews fro things like DRM. If you are actually thinking about buying something, hopefully you have the sense to look past the simple star rating and read some of the reviews; it becomes immediately obvious if the rating is based on the actual merits of the product, or if people are just giving bad ratings to protest some action by the company.
A bunch of angry idiots decide to have themselves a little riot, do some burning and head-cracking, and so far hardly a comment questioning whether this is in any way appropriate? I don't like the efforts to destroy/discredit Wikileaks any more than most here, but I hope the perpetrators of these "retaliatory" crimes feel the full weight of the law coming down on them. Absolutely disgusting to be violently attacking a business because that business made a decision that you disagree with. I have no patience or sympathy for these criminals (and I'm about out of patience with the fucktards who call themselves Anonymous).
You want to call a boycott? Fine. I might even join you. But the second you start attacking them and doing damage, you have crossed the line and deserve to be thrown in jail. There is no valid reason for this, just a bunch of thugs looking for some amusement.
Will Finland, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland do? Just for starters?
Sure... as soon as Reporters Without Borders is able to put up some information on how they score the countries. Oh, sure, they show what the questionnaire they sent out was, they say how many points each questions is worth, but they don't actually show how each Nation got the score it did. If you look at their "country files", they don't even offer any information on most of the top scorers (well, bottom scorers, I guess).
You'd think a group dedicated to a free and transparent press would at least give the background on their ratings for people interested. But I guess it is enough "freedom and transparency" to assume they know what they are doing, assume they received an adequate number of responses from their anonymous sources to be valid, and to assume that their reported scores aren't biased by different expectations in each of the nations they sent questionnaires to.
Again, I'm not saying their rankings are wrong... they do point out some valid problems in the U.S., for example, which definitely keeps it out of the running for the top spot... but they really don't do a very good job of supporting their rankings in any meaningful way. They are essentially saying, "Trust us. We are Reporters Without Borders... we must be telling the truth."
Hmm, the last couple of times I set up DSL w/ ATT it didn't go anything like your experience.
I don't know if I just got lucky or special circumstances or what, but the last two times we moved it was super easy to set up DSL. Don't remember for sure two places ago, but when we moved into our current house there really wasn't any setup necessary (aside from having to re-wire the phone jack in the office so it would be connected to the correct phone line, but that was pretty simple). Just plugged in the new modem they sent us, ignored their instructions (didn't even look at them) and put our username/password into the modem, plugged the router in and told it to automatically receive IP (none of that annoying PPPoE stuff that we were forced to use way back when...) and everything worked great. No need to install any software on our computer, everything just worked the way it is supposed to.
Had a bit of a flaky connection at first, called AT&T, and the next day they had someone out working on the lines. While they initially thought it was just a bad connection at the local box, they ended up finding a whole mess of bad wiring (on their end, fortunately) and spent the next couple of days re-wiring half our street.
My only complaint over the years has been that we are still limited to very slow uploads - I'm pretty content with our ~5-6 mbps downstream speed, but 384k up is just getting ridiculous.
As Microsoft Security Essentials is offered for free for personal and small business (up to 10-PCs) use, the only reason I can think of to pirate AV software is because you're also pirating Windows and can't pass the WGA validation test. Even then why bother...just use the free version of Avast that doesn't care about WGA validation.
MSE is free, but it is from Microsoft - you need at least one other AV program on your system to check up on it.
In all seriousness, not sure about Avast, but AVG has taken to making it nearly impossible to locate the free version of their AV software. It might actually be easier just to download it from a warez site (and if you are downloading an AV scanner, even if it comes with a virus it will be able to remove it, right? RIGHT???).
It's clear that they can see where the license is used on warez sites without spying. But how do they know what countries the *users* are in, and how do they push the advertising to them? Inquiring minds want to know!
Presumably the software checks back in for virus definition updates and such periodically once somebody installed it, regardless of source. AV software is pretty useless if it isn't kept up to date; not too surprising they track by software key, then just run a lookup on the IP that requested the update.
Sandstorm + Solar Array = Highly-polished metal stumps
Nah, you just have to make sure you lay down concrete pads on the rock outcrops before you build the solar panels on them, that way they are automatically protected from the harsh environment of Arrak-, er, I mean, the Sahara.
I'm curious as to what NASA has to do with this, Mono Lake being in California and all.
Yeah, everybody knows NASA is only supposed to spend money in Florida, Texas, and Utah.
They actually do quite a bit of geomicrobiological research, basically looking for interesting forms of life and resulting geologic structures as a way of informing the extraterrestrial search for life. If you can't even be sure you know the signs of the presence of life on Earth, how are you going to know whether you have found signs of life on Mars?
It should have jacked up the prices until it is back in the black and seriously considered 3 instead of this move. Level3 used to have good lawyers at least at some point. Back around 2000 they managed to twist the arms of Sprint, Ebone, MCI and other major players that were way more entrenched than Comcast. So winding it up so it lends a hand to FCC to do a competition case was a really really really bad move.
According to their 2009 annual report, they are already in the black. By a fair bit. As much as Netflix streaming has probably grown in the last year, I really don't think it ate up $3.6 billion in additional bandwidth costs.