A school of all places required a federal grant to find out that turning off the air conditioning saves money? Anyone who's ever paid an electric bill can figure that out pretty quickly all on their own.
What percentage of the degree is taken up with Gen-Ed? If it's just 1 or 2 courses, then maybe it's not that bad.
About a third. With a 4 year degree, the final two years will be entirely related to your subject matter. Of the first two years, even of the general education courses, some of them will be computer related, and therefore relevant.
If you really want to get technical about it, beyond the computer related general education courses, all of the math, science and English courses relating to writing are also at least somewhat relevant. A lot of computer science is math related, especially the subjects of discrete math, and some venturing into probability/statistics, etc. A course in ethics could certainly find application in a computer science career, and understanding the workings of government shouldn't be written off either. All told, the number of completely unrelated courses would be very few, and you might find that a class in something completely unrelated to your major could actually be a welcome change of pace when you're burning out with 4 other classes.
However, so long as people didn't abuse it, we were willing to accommodate it. People with unpopular political views, whistleblowers, people hiding from an abusive ex-significant other, etc. Perfectly good reasons to hide your identity, and we were happy to let you partake in civil participation with the internet community, even though we have no idea who you actually are. We're still willing.
However, those people don't comprise Anonymous as we currently know it. A small, but loud segment of the internet population has decided to use the same virtual anonymity to conduct more nefarious affairs. At first things were relatively harmless. Some people got abused, but juvenile pranks that are short term and relatively simple to recover from will not justify the attention span of those who could make a difference. But at some point, someone crossed the line. It might have happened a long time ago, or more recently, but at some point, someone important (someone who can cause a lot of harm while trying to do something good), will have realized that when it becomes important to stop some of these people, knowing who they actually are is helpful, and sweeping legislation will eventually get passed to make sure that government agencies, oppressive or otherwise, will be able to determine your identity with relative ease.
So great. The person or people who are causing grief for Sony, the FBI and the CIA can be more easily caught in the future. Unfortunately, so can the Chinese citizen who just wants to dream out loud of the hope for a better life. And if the government can do it easily, so can a lot of other people, even if they're not supposed to. The lulz are short term. The people involved will either get caught or grow up in a short period of time, but the ramifications will last forever. The sad thing is, even though it's ethically and legally challenging, there is a time and a place where a large anonymous mob could be useful. Nobody sheds any tears when Westboro encounters some annoying resistance. All I'm saying is, if you're going to use Anonymity as a sword rather than a shield, it would be prudent to pick your battles wisely.
It makes perfect sense. They're children, looking for attention. And they're getting tons of it. I wouldn't go so far as to say news outlets should stop reporting on it, as that gets into censorship territory, and it IS newsworthy to a point, and yet if they knew that the only ones paying any attention to them were law enforcement, and the only reason they hadn't gotten caught yet is because they're waiting to collect enough evidence to ensure the sentences last multiple decades... maybe it would stop all on its own.
As for being out of reach, NOBODY is out of reach. Even if a country is unlikely to allow extradition, consider the fact that if some small country was causing an abnormal amount of grief for the rest of the world, surrounding allies might consider cutting off all internet access to prevent it. Just something to consider.
The common cold doesn't have the bad habit of killing or destroying the life of the people who catch it. We haven't yet cured it, but there's really no reason to. We would rather researchers spend their time on other diseases. Also, since the body's natural immune system is pretty decent at getting rid of a cold in a few days anyway, it's unlikely any "cure" would be any more effective.
Why do you need an inverter? The Laptop itself takes DC, the solar cell generates DC, at best you'd need a voltage regulator to output the laptop's dc input. You'd lose a lot more energy putting it through a double inversion process.
People will always do things that they know to be bad for them. Smoking, drinking, fattening foods, etc. There might have been some issue as to exactly WHY they are bad, and the exact factors that cause them to be bad, but that has very little effect on someone's willingness to partake in such activities. Denis Leary was spot on when he said that you could put cigarettes into a black box with a skull and crossbones on the front, call them Tumors, and smokers would be lining up around the block to get their hands on it. We know what is bad for us. We don't need studies to tell us.
Take global warming. Maybe it's really happening as some of the conflicting studies claim it is, maybe it isn't. Maybe it might actually be good for us, maybe it won't. We don't really know for sure, but far more importantly, hardly anyone really cares. At least, most people don't care enough to make the necessary sacrifices to change and/or prevent what might or might not be happening, even if the likely result is reduced life expectancy or a depreciated lifestyle down the road. None of that is as important as today. That might be shortsighted, but it's the truth, and no matter how many billions of dollars are spent on studies and research, it's at best a lot of hot air (no pun intended).
So what if you're content with the results of a minimal amount of research in the issue and you want to solve that particular "problem". Very well, the solution may not be to conduct study after study and cram the results of that down everyone's throat. Perhaps you should just provide them with a better alternative. People, contrary to popular belief, are not addicted to carbon based fuels, they are addicted to what those fuels provide for them. The simplistic solution is to find a way to provide all those same things for just slightly less expense, and the problem will be solved in less than a decade. Instead of pouring money into studies and lobbying, spend it instead on research into reducing the cost of products that will solve the problem, and profit from the experience. That would actually be a worthwhile endevour, and more people would discover that a science education would have worthwhile benefits as a result. It doesn't help if someone thinks their science education would go toward attempting to prove that fish survive best in water.
I'm actually using the API for a purpose for which I believe it was intended. People who send me messages on my site get the message filtered through the API and if it's in a language other than English, it automatically translates it to English so 1. I can understand it without manually copy/pasting it into Google Translate, 2. cusswords and other abusive language will get translated into English prior to being run through my abuse filter, and 3. it's just awesome to see your messages automatically translated... at least I think so. It's all realtime, and the results are immediately available as part of the web experience. Now, since this is going away, I'm going to need something that can provide the same service... OR I'd even be willing to pay a small fee for such capability if necessary.
I'm still wondering what happened to prompt this, and why they haven't taken other measures to curb the abuse while still allowing legitimate use of it to continue. It doesn't even require the use of keys, like maps does. I sure hope they don't start restricting that service as well.
Infrastructure investments boost the value of a company in the long term, even though it might affect the price negatively in the short term. Thankfully we have both day traders and long term investors. The long term investor will look at the company as one that will make a lot more money in the future and wants to buy the stock. The day trader will realize there will be a short term drop in the price and wants to take advantage of it, so wants to sell the stock. Both sides get what they want, both sides are happy. If not for the day traders, stock prices wouldn't remain relatively stable. There would be huge spikes and huge falloffs anytime something major happened, since everyone would always want to buy at the same time and sell at the same time and nobody would be available to meet that request until the price changed dramatically.
As far as taxing the day traders, that's already happening. The long term investors get to enjoy the capital gains tax rates while the day traders get to pay the marginal rate, which can be up to twice as much.
As far as the stockholders go, corporations don't typically pander to them as much as you'd think. Yes, they DO vote the executives in and out of office as a rule, but day traders don't tend to be the ones voting. The long term investors and those who own a significant percentage of the company are, and THEY have a vested interest in the long term financial viability of the corporation, which includes making investments in infrastructure upgrades and encouraging growth.
Google could also erase your videos the same day that your house burns down, thereby destroying all copies. It's far fetched, but it could happen. A tertiary backup could also get destroyed at the same time and making more backups than that on a regular basis would get to be a hassle, especially if you are constantly verifying that they work. However,we have to get past the point of acceptance that on rare but possible occasions, every once in a while, a few people are just going to have their ass handed to them, whether they deserve it or not, and move on. As for the guy on the one month vacation, and everybody else for that matter, one would assume that since they were able to upload the video in the first place, they're already in possession of a copy, likely the original copy, and likely of higher quality than what currently exists on google video or youtube. If they chose, instead, to erase their high quality original and instead bank on the eternal existence of the low quality copy from a free service that makes no such guarantee, then I'm finding it difficult to display much pity.
I'll admit, it's been almost 20 years since I've been in high school. In Texas. Not only do I not recall any debate about the issue then, I don't even remember EITHER side being discussed in any great detail. What "science" class would discuss evolution anyway, except perhaps biology, where it's reasonably appropriate. Even so, it's a topic that would consume all of about 10 minutes. As far as religion goes, the most in-depth discussion about that would be in my senior English class when we were reading Dante.
I don't even understand why anyone's so excited about this. So an amino acid popped out of the primordial soup some 4 billion years ago. Was it random chance, or did some higher power guide that moment. Maybe some passing alien spacecraft dumped its garbage and it leaked out. The point is, from that moment on, all of history is exactly the same. All of the biological sciences are exactly the same. It doesn't freaking matter how it happened, we just know it happened. So if some teacher wants to say that some people believe that God created all life on Earth by manipulating the first amino acid into forming, then let them. All we're proving here is that people on both sides of the debate have WAY too much free time on their hands.
It is highly unlikely that there is any car on the road today that has a fundamental flaw which would intentionally CAUSE an injury, death, or accident. Of course, that doesn't mean that the driver can't manipulate the vehicle into causing one, intentionally or accidentally, but if the vehicle is driverless, then ANY accident would be entirely the fault of the vehicle itself.
Fictional movies to the contrary, cars don't have a tendancy to just blow up, or otherwise perform in unexpected ways. The recent hoopla over toyota's acceleration problems were a big indication of just how unlikely these things really are. Extensive measures are taken to ensure that everything works as expected and nothing abnormal is going to happen. It's going to take a human driver to screw something up. The car won't be the problem.
However, one accident caused by the Google car will be entirely the fault of a faulty design of the vehicle or the artificial intelligence driving it. The sad fact is, no matter how many years...decades of testing we put such vehicles through, there will be no way to absolutely ensure that the vehicle as a whole will not cause an accident, even though, in theory, that SHOULD be possible. What makes this matter worse is the fact that the accidents that the vehicle is likely to be involved in won't be the dramatic 40+ car pileups that occur as the result of 3 fuel trucks suddenly colliding into each other at 90 mph on a busy highway... No, the car will handle THAT situation perfectly fine. However, while travelling at 2mph, a toddler will stroll out into the street and get run over and the car won't register the obstacle or the impact, thereby causing a severe injury where normally it would either be completely avoidable or severely minimized. Trust me, running over a toddler will definitely go a long way toward killing the project. Even the POSSIBILITY of running over the toddler will kill it.
The thing about the toddler example, if you, as a human who's paying attention to his surrounding, spots a yard with a toddler in it, you're likely to slow down a bit and be more cautious JUST BECAUSE you will be wary of the fact that the toddler might run out into the street, and you want to be ready and able to stop in time. The google car won't easily be able to distinguish between the toddler and a fire hydrant. One could jump out in the street, the other one likely won't. The car therefore needs to be observant of EVERY possible potential obstacle and take preemptive preventative measures to avoid them. It's going to have to be ready for that fire hydrant to jump out in front of it, and slow down for each and every one of them JUST IN CASE. This action will likely not make the vehicle desirable in any way, especially if you're the one driving behind it.
So, not only do you have to be able to show, in advance, that the vehicle will actively avoid all possible accidents as well as not cause any, it will also have to behave in a way that is efficient and not too annoying to humans it's sharing the road with.
Not only that, when he complained about it, the newspaper acknowledged the complaint by changing the content of the article to no longer reference material taken from the blog. Sourcing your material is a good idea for some articles, such as wikipedia pages, where someone debating the accuracy of the content will be able to follow the paper trail, and therefore be able to contest the validity of the sources. But a newspaper commentary on a TV commercial does not need to attribute every source for every tidbit of information they discover. For that matter, there's no reason to believe they hadn't done the research themselves and amazingly drew the same conclusions. I dunno.. Just sounds like a lot of whining over nothing.
Once you reach a certain age, the things you do, the decisions you make, the things you say... they all matter. Of course, prior to the internet, all of that mattered a whole lot less. You could do something of colossal stupidity, have newspaper, radio, and TV coverage of the event, and even have people write books about you, and a couple years later, the public at large would barely remember. Now, get your name mentioned anywhere and it will always be one google search away. So, knowing this, behave in such a way that when people go searching for you, they don't find much of anything bad, because you never did anything to justify someone mentioning it. Likewise, when the opportunity to be a douche online presents itself, it might be responsible on your part, as a steward of future good will toward yourself, to fail to rise to that particular challenge. Don't blame the worms because you were stupid enough to open the can.
Actually, I think that scene was supposed to promote the fact that Scotty had never before used a QWERTY keyboard (or likely a keyboard of any type as we know it), and yet he is so skilled and such a quick learner that he was able to go from hunting and pecking to 80+WPM in a matter of seconds. Considering the skills it would take to be able to sit down at a piece of alien technology and figure it out in a short period of time, that's really not much of a stretch. They didn't call him the miracle worker for nothing.
It's not so much about punishment, but about removing them from the environment so their influence doesn't encourage other children. You don't want to leave those children in the school so they'll be free to make more serious accusations in the future once they have more of a firm grasp on what those words actually mean and the severe damage they can do to someone if the story sounds plausible. At least, at their current age, they can get a royal beatdown from their parents over the issue... or worst case, at least they'll be some other school's problem.
Of course, had the parents actually done some parenting, this could have been avoided.
More importantly, if you're trying to make sure the greatest segment of your population understands a concept, there are probably more people that can relate what "Facebook" is, than "forum", even if forum was more accurate.
There's a big difference between "filed a suit" and "won a lawsuit for". Until someone follows through to the end and gets this issue more or less written into law, the chilling effect will continue. As far as I know, publicity rights end when you die. You can publish about the dead all you like, and it doesn't become an issue unless you're defaming someone who's currently alive.
Seriously. Everyone knows what happened in 2008. We were warned about it for about 5 years leading up to it, and chastised with hindsight about it in the years following. The economic crisis was caused mostly by the housing bubble bursting, and slightly by a sudden inflation in oil prices due to an increase in demand. At no point did anyone glance at the markets of those days and suspect that high speed trading was somehow to blame, or even responsible in any way. So why are we wasting money on government funded studies to confirm it. More importantly, what else are we wasting money on in a vain effort to answer questions we already know the answers to?
They're not censoring anything, they're just filtering the results of the annoying autocomplete, which I hate anyway. If someone is really looking for a linux torrent, they'll just have to click the damn button. The absolute legitimacy of torrents will not be denied in spite of this.
Well, in all fairness, this IS a Sci-FI article (at least according to Slashdot), so your points have merit in that respect.
However, being realistic, solar sails would only work until you reach the heliopause, after which the solar wind would have less force on the sails than whatever floating around out there would. There's no way you could accelerate to any useful speed that way.
As for Ramjets, the theory is sound, assuming there is actually enough fuel to utilize. However, space is VERY empty. My (probably slightly inaccurate) calculations figure that moving at 10% of the speed of light through interstellar space, it would take almost 10 minutes to accumulate 1 gram of matter, assuming a gathering area of one cubic kilometer. That means.. in 50 years, you will have gathered the combined weight of 26 humans (while travelling at 10% of the speed of light). That doesn't even figure how you got it to go that fast in the first place. Considering how massive such a craft would need to be, an extra 2000 pounds of weight isn't going to make the slightest bit of difference if you just included it when you left home, and not bother with the ramjets at all.
The problem isn't that people need a way to clear embarrassing information off of the internet, the problem is that they put it up there in the first place. From the time the kindergartener learns his first dirty word and proceeds to tell it to as many people as he possibly can, he will (hopefully) get chastised severely in short order, and learn, from that experience and many more, that there are certain things you simply don't do in polite society if you want to be treated kindly by those you care about. Almost everybody knows exactly where that line is drawn or can find it reasonably easily. Most people that choose to cross it do so knowing full well the potential ways in which it can backfire. If people choose to ignore that good advice and label themselves to be impetuous and vulgar, and show no responsibility for their actions or their future, then that's their business, and we should LET THEM. While not everything I've ever written or posted has been of the highest caliber, I'm not worried about anyone holding any of it against me either. But that's just me. Everyone makes their choices. If you want to be a douche, go ahead. That's your business. You'll be judged accordingly.
Jury nullification is a double edged sword. While the pot smokers and computer hackers amongst us can imagine a world in which they'll never see a conviction based solely upon a jury's refusal to convict them in spite of clear definition of the law and no reasonable doubt, that same jury could find an innocent black man guilty of a crime against a white woman (think "To Kill a Mockingbird"), even though the evidence clearly shows that no crime was committed.... just because he's black. Of course, while the civil rights movement went a long way toward solving THAT particular problem (with perhaps some room for improvement yet), consider instead that you are the victim of a crime, and the jury decides to acquit the defendant because despite his breaking the law, they really think you deserved to be victimized. Hey... maybe you DID sleep with his girlfriend and he decided to beat your ass for it. There would be a LOT of people who would think his actions were perfectly justifiable. However, it's not a jury's job to decide that. If they feel sympathetic to the plight of the defendant, they can take that into consideration during the sentencing phase if they wish. They don't get to just not convict the guy because they think you deserved that beating. THAT would also be jury nullification. In that case, you probably wouldn't be quite as supportive of the concept.
Don't get me wrong, I understand the concept in theory, and I can even envision times when it might be well supported by everyone. How many times have you heard someone say "They might press charges, but no jury would ever convict him"... But understand, as powerful a weapon as that potentially can be, it's not something you'd want to dilute by corrupting jurors country-wide to disregard what they're instructed to do and instead just do whatever they want. The CSI effect is bad enough. Do you really want a jury to decide your fate based on whether they like you or not? Especially if you're innocent that could be a real concern. You would WANT them to pay close attention to the evidence and not get sidetracked by the empathic pleas of those who are trying to put you away. Face it, the jury is already ticked off that they have to be there. They can get the deliberations over with much quicker if they just decide you're guilty... because.. hey.. you look like a criminal.. or someone who might be... You had better hope that at least ONE of those jurors decides to actually pay attention to the law and the duty they've been entrusted with.
Slashdot Mirror
A school of all places required a federal grant to find out that turning off the air conditioning saves money? Anyone who's ever paid an electric bill can figure that out pretty quickly all on their own.
-Restil
What percentage of the degree is taken up with Gen-Ed? If it's just 1 or 2 courses, then maybe it's not that bad.
About a third. With a 4 year degree, the final two years will be entirely related to your subject matter. Of the first two years, even of the general education courses, some of them will be computer related, and therefore relevant.
If you really want to get technical about it, beyond the computer related general education courses, all of the math, science and English courses relating to writing are also at least somewhat relevant. A lot of computer science is math related, especially the subjects of discrete math, and some venturing into probability/statistics, etc. A course in ethics could certainly find application in a computer science career, and understanding the workings of government shouldn't be written off either. All told, the number of completely unrelated courses would be very few, and you might find that a class in something completely unrelated to your major could actually be a welcome change of pace when you're burning out with 4 other classes.
-Restil
However, so long as people didn't abuse it, we were willing to accommodate it. People with unpopular political views, whistleblowers, people hiding from an abusive ex-significant other, etc. Perfectly good reasons to hide your identity, and we were happy to let you partake in civil participation with the internet community, even though we have no idea who you actually are. We're still willing.
However, those people don't comprise Anonymous as we currently know it. A small, but loud segment of the internet population has decided to use the same
virtual anonymity to conduct more nefarious affairs. At first things were relatively harmless. Some people got abused, but juvenile pranks that are short term and relatively simple to recover from will not justify the attention span of those who could make a difference. But at some point, someone crossed the line. It might have happened a long time ago, or more recently, but at some point, someone important (someone who can cause a lot of harm while trying to do something good), will have realized that when it becomes important to stop some of these people, knowing who they actually are is helpful, and sweeping legislation will eventually get passed to make sure that government agencies, oppressive or otherwise, will be able to determine your identity with relative ease.
So great. The person or people who are causing grief for Sony, the FBI and the CIA can be more easily caught in the future. Unfortunately, so can the Chinese citizen who just wants to dream out loud of the hope for a better life. And if the government can do it easily, so can a lot of other people, even if they're not supposed to. The lulz are short term. The people involved will either get caught or grow up in a short period of time, but the ramifications will last forever.
The sad thing is, even though it's ethically and legally challenging, there is a time and a place where a large anonymous mob could be useful. Nobody sheds any tears when Westboro encounters some annoying resistance. All I'm saying is, if you're going to use Anonymity as a sword rather than a shield, it would be prudent to pick your battles wisely.
It's summer time in Texas. I might be more receptive to the global warming articles now.
-Restil
It makes perfect sense. They're children, looking for attention. And they're getting tons of it. I wouldn't go so far as to say news outlets should stop reporting on it, as that gets into censorship territory, and it IS newsworthy to a point, and yet if they knew that the only ones paying any attention to them were law enforcement, and the only reason they hadn't gotten caught yet is because they're waiting to collect enough evidence to ensure the sentences last multiple decades... maybe it would stop all on its own.
As for being out of reach, NOBODY is out of reach. Even if a country is unlikely to allow extradition, consider the fact that if some small country was causing an abnormal amount of grief for the rest of the world, surrounding allies might consider cutting off all internet access to prevent it. Just something to consider.
-Restil
The common cold doesn't have the bad habit of killing or destroying the life of the people who catch it. We haven't yet cured it, but there's really no reason to. We would rather researchers spend their time on other diseases. Also, since the body's natural immune system is pretty decent at getting rid of a cold in a few days anyway, it's unlikely any "cure" would be any more effective.
-Restil
Why do you need an inverter? The Laptop itself takes DC, the solar cell generates DC, at best you'd need a voltage regulator to output the laptop's dc input. You'd lose a lot more energy putting it through a double inversion process.
-Restil
People will always do things that they know to be bad for them. Smoking, drinking, fattening foods, etc. There might have been some issue as to exactly WHY they are bad, and the exact factors that cause them to be bad, but that has very little effect on someone's willingness to partake in such activities. Denis Leary was spot on when he said that you could put cigarettes into a black box with a skull and crossbones on the front, call them Tumors, and smokers would be lining up around the block to get their hands on it. We know what is bad for us. We don't need studies to tell us.
Take global warming. Maybe it's really happening as some of the conflicting studies claim it is, maybe it isn't. Maybe it might actually be good for us, maybe it won't. We don't really know for sure, but far more importantly, hardly anyone really cares. At least, most people don't care enough to make the necessary sacrifices to change and/or prevent what might or might not be happening, even if the likely result is reduced life expectancy or a depreciated lifestyle down the road. None of that is as important as today. That might be shortsighted, but it's the truth, and no matter how many billions of dollars are spent on studies and research, it's at best a lot of hot air (no pun intended).
So what if you're content with the results of a minimal amount of research in the issue and you want to solve that particular "problem". Very well, the solution may not be to conduct study after study and cram the results of that down everyone's throat. Perhaps you should just provide them with a better alternative. People, contrary to popular belief, are not addicted to carbon based fuels, they are addicted to what those fuels provide for them. The simplistic solution is to find a way to provide all those same things for just slightly less expense, and the problem will be solved in less than a decade. Instead of pouring money into studies and lobbying, spend it instead on research into reducing the cost of products that will solve the problem, and profit from the experience. That would actually be a worthwhile endevour, and more people would discover that a science education would have worthwhile benefits as a result. It doesn't help if someone thinks their science education would go toward attempting to prove that fish survive best in water.
-Restil
I'm actually using the API for a purpose for which I believe it was intended. People who send me messages on my site get the message filtered through the API and if it's in a language other than English, it automatically translates it to English so 1. I can understand it without manually copy/pasting it into Google Translate, 2. cusswords and other abusive language will get translated into English prior to being run through my abuse filter, and 3. it's just awesome to see your messages automatically translated... at least I think so. It's all realtime, and the results are immediately available as part of the web experience. Now, since this is going away, I'm going to need something that can provide the same service... OR I'd even be willing to pay a small fee for such capability if necessary.
I'm still wondering what happened to prompt this, and why they haven't taken other measures to curb the abuse while still allowing legitimate use of it to continue. It doesn't even require the use of keys, like maps does. I sure hope they don't start restricting that service as well.
-Restil
Infrastructure investments boost the value of a company in the long term, even though it might affect the price negatively in the short term. Thankfully we have both day traders and long term investors. The long term investor will look at the company as one that will make a lot more money in the future and wants to buy the stock. The day trader will realize there will be a short term drop in the price and wants to take advantage of it, so wants to sell the stock. Both sides get what they want, both sides are happy. If not for the day traders, stock prices wouldn't remain relatively stable. There would be huge spikes and huge falloffs anytime something major happened, since everyone would always want to buy at the same time and sell at the same time and nobody would be available to meet that request until the price changed dramatically.
As far as taxing the day traders, that's already happening. The long term investors get to enjoy the capital gains tax rates while the day traders get to pay the marginal rate, which can be up to twice as much.
As far as the stockholders go, corporations don't typically pander to them as much as you'd think. Yes, they DO vote the executives in and out of office as a rule, but day traders don't tend to be the ones voting. The long term investors and those who own a significant percentage of the company are, and THEY have a vested interest in the long term financial viability of the corporation, which includes making investments in infrastructure upgrades and encouraging growth.
-Restil
Justification for his firing is sounding better and better all the time.
-Restil
Google could also erase your videos the same day that your house burns down, thereby destroying all copies. It's far fetched, but it could happen. A tertiary backup could also get destroyed at the same time and making more backups than that on a regular basis would get to be a hassle, especially if you are constantly verifying that they work. However,we have to get past the point of acceptance that on rare but possible occasions, every once in a while, a few people are just going to have their ass handed to them, whether they deserve it or not, and move on. As for the guy on the one month vacation, and everybody else for that matter, one would assume that since they were able to upload the video in the first place, they're already in possession of a copy, likely the original copy, and likely of higher quality than what currently exists on google video or youtube. If they chose, instead, to erase their high quality original and instead bank on the eternal existence of the low quality copy from a free service that makes no such guarantee, then I'm finding it difficult to display much pity.
-Restil
I'll admit, it's been almost 20 years since I've been in high school. In Texas. Not only do I not recall any debate about the issue then, I don't even remember EITHER side being discussed in any great detail. What "science" class would discuss evolution anyway, except perhaps biology, where it's reasonably appropriate. Even so, it's a topic that would consume all of about 10 minutes. As far as religion goes, the most in-depth discussion about that would be in my senior English class when we were reading Dante.
I don't even understand why anyone's so excited about this. So an amino acid popped out of the primordial soup some 4 billion years ago. Was it random chance, or did some higher power guide that moment. Maybe some passing alien spacecraft dumped its garbage and it leaked out. The point is, from that moment on, all of history is exactly the same. All of the biological sciences are exactly the same. It doesn't freaking matter how it happened, we just know it happened. So if some teacher wants to say that some people believe that God created all life on Earth by manipulating the first amino acid into forming, then let them. All we're proving here is that people on both sides of the debate have WAY too much free time on their hands.
-Restil
It is highly unlikely that there is any car on the road today that has a fundamental flaw which would intentionally CAUSE an injury, death, or accident. Of course, that doesn't mean that the driver can't manipulate the vehicle into causing one, intentionally or accidentally, but if the vehicle is driverless, then ANY accident would be entirely the fault of the vehicle itself.
Fictional movies to the contrary, cars don't have a tendancy to just blow up, or otherwise perform in unexpected ways. The recent hoopla over toyota's acceleration problems were a big indication of just how unlikely these things really are. Extensive measures are taken to ensure that everything works as expected and nothing abnormal is going to happen. It's going to take a human driver to screw something up. The car won't be the problem.
However, one accident caused by the Google car will be entirely the fault of a faulty design of the vehicle or the artificial intelligence driving it. The sad fact is, no matter how many years...decades of testing we put such vehicles through, there will be no way to absolutely ensure that the vehicle as a whole will not cause an accident, even though, in theory, that SHOULD be possible. What makes this matter worse is the fact that the accidents that the vehicle is likely to be involved in won't be the dramatic 40+ car pileups that occur as the result of 3 fuel trucks suddenly colliding into each other at 90 mph on a busy highway... No, the car will handle THAT situation perfectly fine. However, while travelling at 2mph, a toddler will stroll out into the street and get run over and the car won't register the obstacle or the impact, thereby causing a severe injury where normally it would either be completely avoidable or severely minimized. Trust me, running over a toddler will definitely go a long way toward killing the project. Even the POSSIBILITY of running over the toddler will kill it.
The thing about the toddler example, if you, as a human who's paying attention to his surrounding, spots a yard with a toddler in it, you're likely to slow down a bit and be more cautious JUST BECAUSE you will be wary of the fact that the toddler might run out into the street, and you want to be ready and able to stop in time. The google car won't easily be able to distinguish between the toddler and a fire hydrant. One could jump out in the street, the other one likely won't. The car therefore needs to be observant of EVERY possible potential obstacle and take preemptive preventative measures to avoid them. It's going to have to be ready for that fire hydrant to jump out in front of it, and slow down for each and every one of them JUST IN CASE. This action will likely not make the vehicle desirable in any way, especially if you're the one driving behind it.
So, not only do you have to be able to show, in advance, that the vehicle will actively avoid all possible accidents as well as not cause any, it will also have to behave in a way that is efficient and not too annoying to humans it's sharing the road with.
-Restil
Not only that, when he complained about it, the newspaper acknowledged the complaint by changing the content of the article to no longer reference material taken from the blog. Sourcing your material is a good idea for some articles, such as wikipedia pages, where someone debating the accuracy of the content will be able to follow the paper trail, and therefore be able to contest the validity of the sources. But a newspaper commentary on a TV commercial does not need to attribute every source for every tidbit of information they discover. For that matter, there's no reason to believe they hadn't done the research themselves and amazingly drew the same conclusions. I dunno.. Just sounds like a lot of whining over nothing.
-Restil
Once you reach a certain age, the things you do, the decisions you make, the things you say... they all matter. Of course, prior to the internet, all of that mattered a whole lot less. You could do something of colossal stupidity, have newspaper, radio, and TV coverage of the event, and even have people write books about you, and a couple years later, the public at large would barely remember. Now, get your name mentioned anywhere and it will always be one google search away. So, knowing this, behave in such a way that when people go searching for you, they don't find much of anything bad, because you never did anything to justify someone mentioning it. Likewise, when the opportunity to be a douche online presents itself, it might be responsible on your part, as a steward of future good will toward yourself, to fail to rise to that particular challenge. Don't blame the worms because you were stupid enough to open the can.
-Restil
Actually, I think that scene was supposed to promote the fact that Scotty had never before used a QWERTY keyboard (or likely a keyboard of any type as we know it), and yet he is so skilled and such a quick learner that he was able to go from hunting and pecking to 80+WPM in a matter of seconds. Considering the skills it would take to be able to sit down at a piece of alien technology and figure it out in a short period of time, that's really not much of a stretch. They didn't call him the miracle worker for nothing.
-Restil
It's not so much about punishment, but about removing them from the environment so their influence doesn't encourage other children. You don't want to leave those children in the school so they'll be free to make more serious accusations in the future once they have more of a firm grasp on what those words actually mean and the severe damage they can do to someone if the story sounds plausible. At least, at their current age, they can get a royal beatdown from their parents over the issue... or worst case, at least they'll be some other school's problem.
Of course, had the parents actually done some parenting, this could have been avoided.
-Restil
More importantly, if you're trying to make sure the greatest segment of your population understands a concept, there are probably more people that can relate what "Facebook" is, than "forum", even if forum was more accurate.
-Restil
There's a big difference between "filed a suit" and "won a lawsuit for". Until someone follows through to the end and gets this issue more or less written into law, the chilling effect will continue. As far as I know, publicity rights end when you die. You can publish about the dead all you like, and it doesn't become an issue unless you're defaming someone who's currently alive.
-Restil
Seriously. Everyone knows what happened in 2008. We were warned about it for about 5 years leading up to it, and chastised with hindsight about it in the years following. The economic crisis was caused mostly by the housing bubble bursting, and slightly by a sudden inflation in oil prices due to an increase in demand. At no point did anyone glance at the markets of those days and suspect that high speed trading was somehow to blame, or even responsible in any way. So why are we wasting money on government funded studies to confirm it. More importantly, what else are we wasting money on in a vain effort to answer questions we already know the answers to?
-Restil
They're not censoring anything, they're just filtering the results of the annoying autocomplete, which I hate anyway. If someone is really looking for a linux torrent, they'll just have to click the damn button. The absolute legitimacy of torrents will not be denied in spite of this.
-Restil
Well, in all fairness, this IS a Sci-FI article (at least according to Slashdot), so your points have merit in that respect.
However, being realistic, solar sails would only work until you reach the heliopause, after which the solar wind would have less force on the sails than whatever floating around out there would. There's no way you could accelerate to any useful speed that way.
As for Ramjets, the theory is sound, assuming there is actually enough fuel to utilize. However, space is VERY empty. My (probably slightly inaccurate) calculations figure that moving at 10% of the speed of light through interstellar space, it would take almost 10 minutes to accumulate 1 gram of matter, assuming a gathering area of one cubic kilometer. That means.. in 50 years, you will have gathered the combined weight of 26 humans (while travelling at 10% of the speed of light). That doesn't even figure how you got it to go that fast in the first place. Considering how massive such a craft would need to be, an extra 2000 pounds of weight isn't going to make the slightest bit of difference if you just included it when you left home, and not bother with the ramjets at all.
-Restil
The problem isn't that people need a way to clear embarrassing information off of the internet, the problem is that they put it up there in the first place. From the time the kindergartener learns his first dirty word and proceeds to tell it to as many people as he possibly can, he will (hopefully) get chastised severely in short order, and learn, from that experience and many more, that there are certain things you simply don't do in polite society if you want to be treated kindly by those you care about. Almost everybody knows exactly where that line is drawn or can find it reasonably easily. Most people that choose to cross it do so knowing full well the potential ways in which it can backfire. If people choose to ignore that good advice and label themselves to be impetuous and vulgar, and show no responsibility for their actions or their future, then that's their business, and we should LET THEM. While not everything I've ever written or posted has been of the highest caliber, I'm not worried about anyone holding any of it against me either. But that's just me. Everyone makes their choices. If you want to be a douche, go ahead. That's your business. You'll be judged accordingly.
-Restil
Jury nullification is a double edged sword. While the pot smokers and computer hackers amongst us can imagine a world in which they'll never see a conviction based solely upon a jury's refusal to convict them in spite of clear definition of the law and no reasonable doubt, that same jury could find an innocent black man guilty of a crime against a white woman (think "To Kill a Mockingbird"), even though the evidence clearly shows that no crime was committed.... just because he's black. Of course, while the civil rights movement went a long way toward solving THAT particular problem (with perhaps some room for improvement yet), consider instead that you are the victim of a crime, and the jury decides to acquit the defendant because despite his breaking the law, they really think you deserved to be victimized. Hey... maybe you DID sleep with his girlfriend and he decided to beat your ass for it. There would be a LOT of people who would think his actions were perfectly justifiable. However, it's not a jury's job to decide that. If they feel sympathetic to the plight of the defendant, they can take that into consideration during the sentencing phase if they wish. They don't get to just not convict the guy because they think you deserved that beating. THAT would also be jury nullification. In that case, you probably wouldn't be quite as supportive of the concept.
Don't get me wrong, I understand the concept in theory, and I can even envision times when it might be well supported by everyone. How many times have you heard someone say "They might press charges, but no jury would ever convict him"... But understand, as powerful a weapon as that potentially can be, it's not something you'd want to dilute by corrupting jurors country-wide to disregard what they're instructed to do and instead just do whatever they want. The CSI effect is bad enough. Do you really want a jury to decide your fate based on whether they like you or not? Especially if you're innocent that could be a real concern. You would WANT them to pay close attention to the evidence and not get sidetracked by the empathic pleas of those who are trying to put you away. Face it, the jury is already ticked off that they have to be there. They can get the deliberations over with much quicker if they just decide you're guilty... because.. hey.. you look like a criminal.. or someone who might be... You had better hope that at least ONE of those jurors decides to actually pay attention to the law and the duty they've been entrusted with.
-Restil