Just one thing is on my mind: "How the hell did the Russians do it?"
The Russians, who are the world experts on long-duration space flight, simply relied on their cosmonauts' being able to scurry into a Soyez capsule in the event of a hull breach. Unless the breach were catastrophic, e.g. impact with a large piece of junk, the crew would have many minutes before the cabin would become uninhabitable. This indeed happened in recent times, though not from impact with space debris or meteorites. During the Shuttle-Mir program Tsibliev, the Russian cosmonaut/commander, inadvertantly rammed an unmanned supply vessel into Mir and punctured the hull of the space station. Tsibliev has since been cleared of wrongdoing in the collision since Energia (the private company who runs Mir) and their systems were ultimately at fault, but he and Latzukin, the other cosmonaut on board at the time, will probably never return to space--in the Russian program you don't make Energia look bad and then expect to collect your bonuses or see time in the sky. Michael Foale was the NASA astronaut on Mir at the time. Apparently, as Foale has commented subsequent to his mission, having one's ears pop from a hull breach can really ruin one's day.
The collision, depressurization, and subsequent risky EVAs (even an intra-vehicular activity where astronauts moved through the depressurized cabin to restore the science component of Mir and diagnose the breach) caused much concern among NASA for the safety of the astronaut and cosmonauts on board. It should come as no surprise that the international community wants a system for averting such emergencies on the ISS.
You don't want to tell me it's because the Russians are more lucky, do you?
No, but cultural differences exist in how we and they approach space flight. In short, we think they are reckless, and they think we are wusses. In many ways their cosmonauts are more flexible than our astronauts. We train our astronauts six ways until Sunday to do precisely what we want them to do in space, and almost without fail they do it. The Russians have less reliance on specifics, but they have a wealth of experience forming contingencies and repairing broken stuff. Space stations suffer breakdowns, and the ISS will be no different. The Russians cosmonauts and ground support personnel, with their experience keeping Mir up in the sky for so long, will prove to be valuable partners in the ISS program.
your university ultimately owns the intellectual property for you dissertation (why are they giving PhDs to idiots who can't read the fine print).
This isn't so in all cases. I own the copyright on my document, e.g.--I remember hoofing across town in the rain to get a money order to register the darned thing.
Leave it to idiots at slashdot to think this is some big deal.
Since the original agreements with UMI are being upheld, I agree that their publishing excerpts from dissertation abstracts is hardly of earth-shattering importance. My own reaction was more of surprise than anything at seeing my document listed there. (I'd be surprised if mine has sold even a single copy--my thesis advisor didn't even bother reading it).
Now I'm really mad--I mean, I stood to make a fortune off the rights to my dissertation The Formation of Current Sheets in Slowly Evolving, Low-Beta, Nearly Ideal, Magnetohydrodynamic Plasmas, and now I see they beat me to it. Nuts!
All levity aside, this causes me to wonder what exactly I got when I paid to register the copyright on the work. Time to get in contact with my college roomate, the intellectual property attorney.....
I've always had difficulty with the "offtopic" moderation since it seems so nebulously defined. When the beer guy or the penisbird guy posts the moderation is easy, but what is a moderator to do with a tangential, non-flame post that generates two dozen followup messages? He can choose to flag the original post as offtopic, but I contend that he cannot, in good faith, flag the followup messages since they are topical relative to the thread if not the story. (No consensus on this exists, however, and we still see instances of people burning all their points in vain attempts to stifle these threads). Even with a full cadre of moderation points a single moderator cannot hope to stifle a thread altogether.
Is "offtopic" intended to mean "in the context of the larger discussion" or does it mean "in the context of the given thread?"
Zoning rules based in the community you/he lives in would prevent the kind of abuse you're using as a strawman.
Perhaps they would, but this does not modify the argument. The original poster belives that he has carte blanche on his property, so he cannot accept the authority of zoning rules. He will have to accept that others, such as me and my crackhouse denizens, would not be subject to their authority either.
What are you saying here? What do you mean, 'allowed'? If he owns his land, he should be able to sow salt on it or plant genetically modified SuperCrops, if he can sell them, whatever he pleases.
Mind if I move in next to you and turn my property into a junkyard/crack house/toxic waste dump? What I do on my property can affect those outside my property, so it shouldn't be so big a stretch to think that some entity could be endowed with the power and the right to regulate what I do with my property. We can quibble over the extent of this power and over what is appropriate and what isn't, but I do not have free reign to do "whatever I please."
Given that there's nothing to be gained from doing it -- anyone since 1970 or so could have grabbed a physics grad student or two, walked by the *bad* security at Los Alamos or wherever and picked up some plutonium, and made a suitcase bomb to blow up New York.
You are quite articulate for someone who is talking out of his arse. You must have had alot of practice.
You sound so certain of this--can you produce some (any) documentation of weapons-grade plutonium being so vulnerable, so easily accessible, that anyone who wants it can get it? I didn't think so. While developing the technology to make a nuclear device is hardly a bottleneck to a nation with the means, the will, and the materials to construct nuclear weapons (every nation that has tried has succeeded on the first try), your claim that one can just waltz into TA-55 at Los Alamos and grab a bunch of weapons-grade plutonium is laughable. Despite its being pilloried in the press for security incidents, anyone with any experience at LANL knows that the security there is nowhere near as "bad"--excuse me, "*bad*"--as you described it, especially where nuclear materials are concerned. If it were, then you can bet that terrorist devices would have been made and would have been used by now.
Any 'agency', or 'law', or 'bureau' will be misused and abused to the greatest extent possible.
Ah, yes, the old "To solve your problem you need centralized control; every large, centralized institution is corrupt; corrupt institutions are bad; therefore making any attempt to solve your problem is bad" argument for inaction. I would contend that while many institutions are indeed corrupt and are abused, these same institutions are still capable of accomplishing things of merit: The mail is still delivered. The IRS collects revenue for the government. The weatherman is still right every once in awhile.
Quite sizable telescopes of this type have already been constructed. For example, at the HIPAS facility in Fairbanks, AL, a liquid-mercury telescope is used for collecting LIDAR data (optical backscatter from the upper atmosphere/ionosphere). IIRC their telescope was quite large, one of the largest-diameter optical telescopes in the world, however they couldn't orient it by more than a few degrees one way or another (this done by adjusting the optics near the focal point, not by positioning the mirror). Even still, it was very cheap (only a few thousand dollar or so to construct), so one might imagine using 1000 or so for meteor and space-junk surveys.
Taxes were cut at one point during Reagan's term, and revenues WENT UP.
Man, I just love this argument--from one datum follows an entire fiscal philosophy. Here's something you'll likely find entertaining and equally relevant: One month I didn't pay off my credit card balance in full, and my revenues WENT UP.
The problem was that the (democrat controlled) congress upped spending more than the added revenue allowed for.
Suffice it to say that the Democrats and Republicans were both fiscally irresponsible during the early '80s. Reagan was so eager to push through his fiscal package that he bought supporting votes in Congress by promising his support to a host of their pet projects. To separate the famous and much-ballyhooed "tax cut" from the Congressional spending it triggered is naive and ignores the challenges facing Reagan in crafting public policy.
The Bonus Army was actually charged with horses by General MacArthur.
IIRC, in the Bonus Army "campaign" MacArthur was in command and Eisenhower was his aide. But it was Patton (then a major) who led the Third Cavalry in its charge against the Bonus Army. After the cavalry charge the ranks were broken and they returned to their camp. Then MacArthur (against orders) ordered a bunch of tanks to run Stomper-Truck over their shantytown followed by torching the place to the ground. All told, over 100 men, women, and children died, including two infants who suffocated in the tear gas attack. It was hardly our finest hour--it happened just after Hoover got the GOP nomination, and the callous treatment of Great War veterans contributed to his loss that November.
I can't see the difference between how China is treating members of the Falun Gong and what's happening in Philadelphia (and what did happen) in Seattle.
Agreed. Both the U.S. and China understand quite well that demonstrations and the appearance of chaos and civil unrest are bad for business. I've talked with Chinese who were in support of the Chinese government's handling of the Tiananmen Square incident--at that time, some ten years ago, China's economy was taking off due to investment from the West. Many corporate eyes were trained on China to see how they would handle the protests. When they saw that they would happily call in the military to quell an otherwise peaceful demonstration, it was clear that it was much safer to invest in China than, say, Russia. And honestly, how could the U.S. in good conscience disagree with their actions after the Kent State murders?
Heavy-handed police tactics are nothing new in the U.S. We sent state militias out to help Pinkerton break strikes at Carnegie Steel, we sent Patton and his cavalry to charge and tear gas the Bonus Army and chase them off D.C. soil, we firehosed Dr. King and his companions in the name of "segregation today, segregation tomorrow." In each case the government, a pawn of the "haves," abused its power over the "have nots" in the name of good business and preservation of the status quo. Why should we expect this precedent to change? And why should we expect China not to learn from our good example?
However, my point still stands in that these fears are antiquated. As a result, the applications of the ammendment must be called into question.
I'm not sure I agree with your assessment that militias are obsolete today. To take a modern example, the Black Panthers could be perceived as a militia formed to ensure that people's rights (namely the right not to get the bejesus beat out of oneself by the pigs) were protected. As an even more modern example, the Y2K scare caused a surge in gun purchases among Americans; a great many Americans were sufficiently frightened of the possibility of chaos and the inability of their government to protect them in the event of such chaos to appreciate their Second Amendment rights. I suspect the Second Amendment/gun control issue isn't as clean an analogy as you want for this discussion.
For practical purposes the FBI covets the ability to monitor all communications to and from criminal suspects. Without Carnivore it is difficult for them to guarantee that they can do this monitoring on electronic communications with any measure of completeness. While I understand their wanting to have this capability, it doesn't mean that I accept that they should have it.
Frankly, after observing firsthand an FBI criminal investigation, I don't trust the FBI with the information they could divine about me with Carnivore, and I think that few would if they gave the matter much consideration. If I were to fall under investigation for some reason, and as part of a criminal investigation they were to scan the traffic to one of my throwaway email accounts (claudiusclaudius@yahoo.com, e.g.), then I will be profiled as a goatpr0n lover and pyramid-scheme participant based on the spam I get there. Since FBI investigative procedure as often as not involves finding a suspect as fast as possible by fitting candidates to a criminal "profile" and then digging up all the dirt they can on the suspect to (hopefully) tie him or her to the crime, I am uncomfortable with their assurances that Carnivore will not be abused. Even if not abused, I don't want the spam sent my way to affect their perception of me, and I certainly don't want my grandmother to read about my alleged goatpr0n fixation in the New York Times. Recall how Richard Jewel was pilloried in the press for his love of pr0n because law enforcement leaked their having found a skin mag in his apartment.
What a fantastic law!! What I really want to know, and didn't pick up from the article, is this: which senator(s) or representative(s) (is|are) responsible??
Lest you morph into a modern-day Diogenes in search of an honest (responsible) Congresscreature, I'll save you some trouble: there flat out ain't any.
I think it'd be a pretty cool mission, although I can understand why NASA may prefer to direct their funds towards other projects that would return larger amounts of results for less risk. I hope this doesn't mean Europa Orbiter or Solar Probe are also in danger of cancellation.
I agree that this would have been an interesting, if somewhat risky, mission and it's a bit disheartening that we aren't giving it a shot. I do think that both the Europa Oribter and the Solar Probe enjoy considerable advantages over PKE, however. EO has the public's imagination behind it with the possibility of liquid water and extraterrestrial life existing there. The Solar Probe may answer longstanding issues of the heating and dynamics of the solar corona, which will imporove our understanding of solar flares, CMEs and the origin of the solar wind. Since much of today's economy relies upon the spacecraft buzzing over our heads, this mission has much practical value in its ability to help us understand and predict solar storms.
Of course these reasons hardly exempt either mission from being cancelled--they just queue them in front of missions whose sole objective is scientifc. With election-year politics and the ensuing silliness, I wouldn't bet on their fates.
It's probably only a matter of time before the NSA and the FBI (Carnivore, anyone?) decides to knock out these backbones to stop those awful, awful criminals from trafficking in "pirated music" and "child pornography". And then what will happen to our web?
Nah. You see, this Internet thing, aside from its intended purpose of trafficking all sorts of salaciousness, has the curious side effect of making a large number of people in the U.S. a great deal of money. Heaps and gobs of the stuff, in fact. And if there's one thing the U.S. government is addicted to it's mad cash flowing into the coffers. To suggest that they would pinch off the stream of greenbacks heading their way is like thinking a guy can stop peeing midstream. It just ain't gonna happen.
Slashdot for one, need to make a clear definition as to whats right and whats wrong.
Are you volunteering to lead this crew of Thought Police? What criteria do you propose we use to excise subversive posts--shall we use strict legality according to current U.S. law? What about the international audiences/. and k5 enjoy? What about unjust laws? What about ambiguous areas of law? Do you really believe that ideas in a discussion forum should be censored solely because they do not fit with your definition of right and wrong?
Part of the charm of Slashdot and k5 is that these sites don't discriminate among its posters' ideas beyond the moderation imposed by its own readers. For example, if you are on the side of the RIAA in the Napster debate (and many/.ers are), then nobody will stop you from posting pro-RIAA essays. In fact, if your post is thoughtful and interesting many moderators will moderate you up if only to stimulate an interesting discussion. Most of us who read/. and k5 are quite capable of making moral and ethical decisions for ourselves and we are in little need of sanctimonious censors.
Speaking of/. as a single entity with a single voice is inaccurate. A better characterization is one of a community of people with a shared interest in a collection of related topics. While many attitudes are shared by a plurality or even a majority of/.ers ("Microsoft sucks," "The Matrix was a fun, if silly, movie," "Jon Katz makes up too many new words."), opposing opinions can always be found within the Slashdot community. (Well, perhaps not with the Jon Katz word-coining issue).
Most of the times, we are so hard to identify whats right or wrong.
That's because most of the time one cannot so narrowly determine the "rightness" of a given idea. Privacy is both right and wrong depending on circumstance and the value system of the one assessing its rightness. Copying software or music is both right and wrong--even the strict U.S. legal definition of "fair use" is a gray area. In fact, the continued existence of nuclear weapons is both right and wrong. (Is keeping an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction necessarily "wrong" if the weapons are never used, if total war is prevented by MAD, and if much human suffering is thereby circumvented?) In my mind the most interesting discussions are those where moral ambiguity arises. If I want someone else to make all these decisions for me, then I can just tune in to Rush Limbaugh.
Either I'm misunderstanding something, or the sterilization is done by the radiation from the plasma...
While I can't speak for the plasma device in question, I do know that many room-temperature plasmas devised for decontamination function by chemical means. The plasma forms highly reactive chemicals agents, such as oxygen free radicals, that can chemically alter target materials like sarin or VX.
Actually, since most of this is overhead anyway, you wouldn't save anything by laying off half your staff--the cost of your employees would just go up to 700k$/employee or so.
No serious scientist argues that there will be more than marginal scientific benefit to the ISS, and most of what benefit there is could be realized by the Space Shuttle more cheaply.
As a professional scientist and a habitual devil's advocate I choose to keep a somewhat more open mind on the issue. For better or worse the ISS is quite possibly going to be built, so we may as well challenge ourselves to think creatively on how best to use the ISS facility to do some good science. Only so much can be gained by bemoaning the misappropriation of funds, and at this stage of the game it's not very constructive. (Killing the ISS now would only sour the public on the space program and would do little for your cause of solar system exploration).
A unique aspect of the ISS environment is the ability it confers to do extended experiments in high quality microgravity conditions. As an example, one area of basic science research that can benefit greatly from this kind of environment is dusty plasma research; in dusty plasmas an experimenter may observe directly liquids and solids (plasma crystals) and thereby obtain a better understanding of pervasive phenomena such as melting and fracturing. Gravity plays a dominant role in dusty plasma dynamics on Earth, and experiments conducted on parabolic flights have shown many intriguing results. John Goree of the University of Iowa and his collaborators have championed a facility for performing dusty plasma experiments on the ISS, and when I last spoke with John this was slated to be one of the first experiments to be performed on the ISS.
The dusty plasma experiment is just one of many possibilities for the ISS facility, and it is an example of a pure-science experiment that cannot be performed as well in terrestrial or shuttle conditions. Undoubtedly one can make a case that the money could be better spent elsewhere, but I think this is counterproductive. The ISS is such splendid pork-barrel politics that it has little chance of dying. Rather than drown ourselves in pessimism, we are better off considering the money as spent and figuring out other interesting, if somewhat extravagent, experiments to do on the ISS. We just have to be a bit clever and opportunistic.
This reminds me of how the DOE labs do their accounting in terms of "Technical Staff Members" (TSMs). If I'm not mistaken, overhead costs are folded into the cost of an employee, so every employee winds up costing the organization ca. 300k$ to 400k$ irrespective of whether the employee is a journeyman welder or the leader of a nuclear weapons design team.
IIRC, applications for the astronaut training program are reviewed every two years in July; the next screening takes place approximately a year from now. You can find out more information and download application forms at NASA's astronaut selection website. Generally speaking, for admittance as a mission specialist you need to possess an advanced scientific, technical, or medical degree (PhDs and MDs are preferred) as well as demonstrate leadership in your particular field. (Most if not all of the pilots have prior military training, so a civilian's best shot into the program is as a mission specialist). Becoming a NASA astronaut is highly competitive and grueling, as I'm sure you can imagine, but since it is hands down the coolest job imaginable, it won't stop me from sending my application in.
While I'm sure this is a troll, some of the points raised are disturbing. I'll throw caution to the wind and feed the beast anyway....
Sorry for my ranting, but at the end of the day evolution is nothing more than a myth with only circumstantial "facts" to back it up, and it doesn't deserve to be taught to children who are blinded to this important difference.
While you may believe that the evidence in favor of evolution is suspect, I would counter that you have not objectively viewed the evidence in question. Furthermore, your viewpoint is in opposition to that of mainstream science and science education organizations, such as the AAAS and the AAPT, who have condemned the change in Kansas school standards. The burden is on you, my friend, to prove that the Christian mythos is necessarily a more consistent explanation of the facts than is evolution. It is not enough to sit back and say "Evolution is wrong, ergo the Christian myth is right." Please keep in mind that "the bible says so" will carry little weight in your argument; heliocentrists were condemned for decades by the church in part because the bible allegedly indicated that the earth was the center of the cosmos.
There are plenty more worthwhile projects we can do in space, ones with real scientific value.
Looking for the boundary of "Heaven?" Searching for "angels on high?" I shudder to think what one who has no understanding of how science is conducted would imagine space projects with "real scientific value" to be. I suppose you do not believe in geology either, that dinosaurs were just big beasts who wouldn't fit on the ark, the Big Bang theory is false, and that nuclear theory is suspect as well (can't have carbon dating indicating an age of a living entity that is older than the age of the universe). Do you object to the term "fossil fuel?"
Allow me to distinguish between science and religious scibabble for you: Science (in principle) follows the scientific method. You formulate a hypothesis, conduct experiments (such as this one) to test said hypothesis, and then you refine your hypothesis based on the results of the test. Sometimes this leads to the unpleasantness of having to scrap your "sexy brilliant idea" and start anew, and sometimes you just have to tweak the hypothesis somewhat to explain the data better. Then more experiments are conducted, and more refinement is performed. Eventually, when the hypothesis is good enough that it stands the test of numerous experiments it gets elevated to the status of "theory." A scientific theory is logically nothing more than a successful hypothesis, albeit one that has passed so many tests successfully that one may strongly suspect it to possess a measure of veracity. Scibabble (I shall use our good friends in Kansas as an example of scibabble at its best/worst) holds that "idea A, my pet idea, is contrary to idea B, which happens to be a scientific theory. I do not believe the weight of evidence in support of B--I shall call it all "circumstantial evidence"--therefore idea A must be correct." It is a position based on a logical fallacy, and as such its conclusions are suspect. When I attended grade school we indeed learned about "this important difference," however it would appear that you did not.
Thank God I come from somewhere where they value the difference between a theory and the Truth.
Kansas, perchance? I find it curious that you capitalize the word "truth"--perhaps you associate the notion of truth with biblical truth only? It must be difficult to do your taxes each year.... "Blast! Where's the 1040A section of Leviticus?!"
If my company gave me a computer for my home and then told me how I could use it, the motherfuckers better pay my ass $24/hr when I use the damn thing. My employer should have absolutely no say whatsoever about what I do when I am off the clock.
While I admire your strong sense of principle, I disagree with you regarding the fairness of the arrangement. I hate to argue over semantics, but in most cases, such as the organization I described in my earlier post, the machines are not intended as being "given" but rather as being "provided." They are the property of the employer, and as such they are intended to be used only in a manner that is approved by the employer. I see this as being no different from an employer providing me with other equipment to take home, be it a cell phone, company car, or ball point pen. If I don't like the rules on how I can use the equipment, then I can always just buy my own car, phone, pen, computer, PDA, etc. I just don't see how I am entitled, for example, to drive the company car on my vacation or to use their computer and fast net connection to surf pr0n if they don't permit it.
In my position I receive a fixed salary regardless of how long it takes me to do my job. If I want to leave early two days a week to play tennis, then I can do that and nobody will care. If I want to log in from home in the evening to check the status of a job that I launched earlier that day, then I rather like their having provided me with a machine and a fast connection to the lab with which to do this.
In my mind, as long as policies are straightforward, unambiguous, and reasonable, then I have no problems with abiding by them. If I do find them to be objectionable, then I can always find a new employer. I guess I missed your point--how exactly is this unjust and unfair?
I couldn't agree with you more regarding use of University facilities for pr0n downloads. A suggestion to the Harvard Divinity School (and to any organization who distributes computers for people's home uses) would be to do as the U.S. Department of Energy does, and that is, put a sticker on every machine that explicitly states the usage policy. This makes issues of perceived privacy easily resolvable by most anyone capable of logging in. Quoting from their policy:
"Notice to Users. This is a Federal computer system and is the property of the United States Government. it is for authorized use only. Users (authorized or unauthorized) have no explicit or implicit expectation of privacy."
No ambiguity here.
Using the company (or university) resources to surf pr0n is, in my mind, akin to using a company car to drive to the pr0n shop to pick up a few vids. If someone sees you and reports you to your organization, I don't see how privacy can keep you from getting fired if your organization so chooses.
Slashdot Mirror
Just one thing is on my mind: "How the hell did the Russians do it?"
The Russians, who are the world experts on long-duration space flight, simply relied on their cosmonauts' being able to scurry into a Soyez capsule in the event of a hull breach. Unless the breach were catastrophic, e.g. impact with a large piece of junk, the crew would have many minutes before the cabin would become uninhabitable. This indeed happened in recent times, though not from impact with space debris or meteorites. During the Shuttle-Mir program Tsibliev, the Russian cosmonaut/commander, inadvertantly rammed an unmanned supply vessel into Mir and punctured the hull of the space station. Tsibliev has since been cleared of wrongdoing in the collision since Energia (the private company who runs Mir) and their systems were ultimately at fault, but he and Latzukin, the other cosmonaut on board at the time, will probably never return to space--in the Russian program you don't make Energia look bad and then expect to collect your bonuses or see time in the sky. Michael Foale was the NASA astronaut on Mir at the time. Apparently, as Foale has commented subsequent to his mission, having one's ears pop from a hull breach can really ruin one's day.
The collision, depressurization, and subsequent risky EVAs (even an intra-vehicular activity where astronauts moved through the depressurized cabin to restore the science component of Mir and diagnose the breach) caused much concern among NASA for the safety of the astronaut and cosmonauts on board. It should come as no surprise that the international community wants a system for averting such emergencies on the ISS.
You don't want to tell me it's because the Russians are more lucky, do you?
No, but cultural differences exist in how we and they approach space flight. In short, we think they are reckless, and they think we are wusses. In many ways their cosmonauts are more flexible than our astronauts. We train our astronauts six ways until Sunday to do precisely what we want them to do in space, and almost without fail they do it. The Russians have less reliance on specifics, but they have a wealth of experience forming contingencies and repairing broken stuff. Space stations suffer breakdowns, and the ISS will be no different. The Russians cosmonauts and ground support personnel, with their experience keeping Mir up in the sky for so long, will prove to be valuable partners in the ISS program.
Time to get in contact with my college roomate, the intellectual property attorney.....
Scratch that--I still owe him money. Maybe I'll just hit "Refresh" a few hundred times and then ask for a cut of the banner ad revenues....
your university ultimately owns the intellectual property for you dissertation (why are they giving PhDs to idiots who can't read the fine print).
This isn't so in all cases. I own the copyright on my document, e.g.--I remember hoofing across town in the rain to get a money order to register the darned thing.
Leave it to idiots at slashdot to think this is some big deal.
Since the original agreements with UMI are being upheld, I agree that their publishing excerpts from dissertation abstracts is hardly of earth-shattering importance. My own reaction was more of surprise than anything at seeing my document listed there. (I'd be surprised if mine has sold even a single copy--my thesis advisor didn't even bother reading it).
Now I'm really mad--I mean, I stood to make a fortune off the rights to my dissertation The Formation of Current Sheets in Slowly Evolving, Low-Beta, Nearly Ideal, Magnetohydrodynamic Plasmas, and now I see they beat me to it. Nuts!
All levity aside, this causes me to wonder what exactly I got when I paid to register the copyright on the work. Time to get in contact with my college roomate, the intellectual property attorney.....
I've always had difficulty with the "offtopic" moderation since it seems so nebulously defined. When the beer guy or the penisbird guy posts the moderation is easy, but what is a moderator to do with a tangential, non-flame post that generates two dozen followup messages? He can choose to flag the original post as offtopic, but I contend that he cannot, in good faith, flag the followup messages since they are topical relative to the thread if not the story. (No consensus on this exists, however, and we still see instances of people burning all their points in vain attempts to stifle these threads). Even with a full cadre of moderation points a single moderator cannot hope to stifle a thread altogether.
Is "offtopic" intended to mean "in the context of the larger discussion" or does it mean "in the context of the given thread?"
Zoning rules based in the community you/he lives in would prevent the kind of abuse you're using as a strawman.
Perhaps they would, but this does not modify the argument. The original poster belives that he has carte blanche on his property, so he cannot accept the authority of zoning rules. He will have to accept that others, such as me and my crackhouse denizens, would not be subject to their authority either.
What are you saying here? What do you mean, 'allowed'? If he owns his land, he should be able to sow salt on it or plant genetically modified SuperCrops, if he can sell them, whatever he pleases.
Mind if I move in next to you and turn my property into a junkyard/crack house/toxic waste dump? What I do on my property can affect those outside my property, so it shouldn't be so big a stretch to think that some entity could be endowed with the power and the right to regulate what I do with my property. We can quibble over the extent of this power and over what is appropriate and what isn't, but I do not have free reign to do "whatever I please."
Given that there's nothing to be gained from doing it -- anyone since 1970 or so could have grabbed a physics grad student or two, walked by the *bad* security at Los Alamos or wherever and picked up some plutonium, and made a suitcase bomb to blow up New York.
You are quite articulate for someone who is talking out of his arse. You must have had alot of practice.
You sound so certain of this--can you produce some (any) documentation of weapons-grade plutonium being so vulnerable, so easily accessible, that anyone who wants it can get it? I didn't think so. While developing the technology to make a nuclear device is hardly a bottleneck to a nation with the means, the will, and the materials to construct nuclear weapons (every nation that has tried has succeeded on the first try), your claim that one can just waltz into TA-55 at Los Alamos and grab a bunch of weapons-grade plutonium is laughable. Despite its being pilloried in the press for security incidents, anyone with any experience at LANL knows that the security there is nowhere near as "bad"--excuse me, "*bad*"--as you described it, especially where nuclear materials are concerned. If it were, then you can bet that terrorist devices would have been made and would have been used by now.
Any 'agency', or 'law', or 'bureau' will be misused and abused to the greatest extent possible.
Ah, yes, the old "To solve your problem you need centralized control; every large, centralized institution is corrupt; corrupt institutions are bad; therefore making any attempt to solve your problem is bad" argument for inaction. I would contend that while many institutions are indeed corrupt and are abused, these same institutions are still capable of accomplishing things of merit: The mail is still delivered. The IRS collects revenue for the government. The weatherman is still right every once in awhile.
Next time, think before you post.
Good advice for us all.
(Sorry to reply to my own post).
I just looked up the HIPAS LIDAR specs here. They have a 2.7m liquid mercury telescope as part of their LIDAR diagnostics.
Quite sizable telescopes of this type have already been constructed. For example, at the HIPAS facility in Fairbanks, AL, a liquid-mercury telescope is used for collecting LIDAR data (optical backscatter from the upper atmosphere/ionosphere). IIRC their telescope was quite large, one of the largest-diameter optical telescopes in the world, however they couldn't orient it by more than a few degrees one way or another (this done by adjusting the optics near the focal point, not by positioning the mirror). Even still, it was very cheap (only a few thousand dollar or so to construct), so one might imagine using 1000 or so for meteor and space-junk surveys.
Taxes were cut at one point during Reagan's term, and revenues WENT UP.
Man, I just love this argument--from one datum follows an entire fiscal philosophy. Here's something you'll likely find entertaining and equally relevant: One month I didn't pay off my credit card balance in full, and my revenues WENT UP.
The problem was that the (democrat controlled) congress upped spending more than the added revenue allowed for.
Suffice it to say that the Democrats and Republicans were both fiscally irresponsible during the early '80s. Reagan was so eager to push through his fiscal package that he bought supporting votes in Congress by promising his support to a host of their pet projects. To separate the famous and much-ballyhooed "tax cut" from the Congressional spending it triggered is naive and ignores the challenges facing Reagan in crafting public policy.
The Bonus Army was actually charged with horses by General MacArthur.
IIRC, in the Bonus Army "campaign" MacArthur was in command and Eisenhower was his aide. But it was Patton (then a major) who led the Third Cavalry in its charge against the Bonus Army. After the cavalry charge the ranks were broken and they returned to their camp. Then MacArthur (against orders) ordered a bunch of tanks to run Stomper-Truck over their shantytown followed by torching the place to the ground. All told, over 100 men, women, and children died, including two infants who suffocated in the tear gas attack. It was hardly our finest hour--it happened just after Hoover got the GOP nomination, and the callous treatment of Great War veterans contributed to his loss that November.
Curious similarity in timing, no?
I can't see the difference between how China is treating members of the Falun Gong and what's happening in Philadelphia (and what did happen) in Seattle.
Agreed. Both the U.S. and China understand quite well that demonstrations and the appearance of chaos and civil unrest are bad for business. I've talked with Chinese who were in support of the Chinese government's handling of the Tiananmen Square incident--at that time, some ten years ago, China's economy was taking off due to investment from the West. Many corporate eyes were trained on China to see how they would handle the protests. When they saw that they would happily call in the military to quell an otherwise peaceful demonstration, it was clear that it was much safer to invest in China than, say, Russia. And honestly, how could the U.S. in good conscience disagree with their actions after the Kent State murders?
Heavy-handed police tactics are nothing new in the U.S. We sent state militias out to help Pinkerton break strikes at Carnegie Steel, we sent Patton and his cavalry to charge and tear gas the Bonus Army and chase them off D.C. soil, we firehosed Dr. King and his companions in the name of "segregation today, segregation tomorrow." In each case the government, a pawn of the "haves," abused its power over the "have nots" in the name of good business and preservation of the status quo. Why should we expect this precedent to change? And why should we expect China not to learn from our good example?
However, my point still stands in that these fears are antiquated. As a result, the applications of the ammendment must be called into question.
I'm not sure I agree with your assessment that militias are obsolete today. To take a modern example, the Black Panthers could be perceived as a militia formed to ensure that people's rights (namely the right not to get the bejesus beat out of oneself by the pigs) were protected. As an even more modern example, the Y2K scare caused a surge in gun purchases among Americans; a great many Americans were sufficiently frightened of the possibility of chaos and the inability of their government to protect them in the event of such chaos to appreciate their Second Amendment rights. I suspect the Second Amendment/gun control issue isn't as clean an analogy as you want for this discussion.
For practical purposes the FBI covets the ability to monitor all communications to and from criminal suspects. Without Carnivore it is difficult for them to guarantee that they can do this monitoring on electronic communications with any measure of completeness. While I understand their wanting to have this capability, it doesn't mean that I accept that they should have it.
Frankly, after observing firsthand an FBI criminal investigation, I don't trust the FBI with the information they could divine about me with Carnivore, and I think that few would if they gave the matter much consideration. If I were to fall under investigation for some reason, and as part of a criminal investigation they were to scan the traffic to one of my throwaway email accounts (claudiusclaudius@yahoo.com, e.g.), then I will be profiled as a goatpr0n lover and pyramid-scheme participant based on the spam I get there. Since FBI investigative procedure as often as not involves finding a suspect as fast as possible by fitting candidates to a criminal "profile" and then digging up all the dirt they can on the suspect to (hopefully) tie him or her to the crime, I am uncomfortable with their assurances that Carnivore will not be abused. Even if not abused, I don't want the spam sent my way to affect their perception of me, and I certainly don't want my grandmother to read about my alleged goatpr0n fixation in the New York Times. Recall how Richard Jewel was pilloried in the press for his love of pr0n because law enforcement leaked their having found a skin mag in his apartment.
What a fantastic law!! What I really want to know, and didn't pick up from the article, is this: which senator(s) or representative(s) (is|are) responsible??
Lest you morph into a modern-day Diogenes in search of an honest (responsible) Congresscreature, I'll save you some trouble: there flat out ain't any.
I think it'd be a pretty cool mission, although I can understand why NASA may prefer to direct their funds towards other projects that would return larger amounts of results for less risk. I hope this doesn't mean Europa Orbiter or Solar Probe are also in danger of cancellation.
I agree that this would have been an interesting, if somewhat risky, mission and it's a bit disheartening that we aren't giving it a shot. I do think that both the Europa Oribter and the Solar Probe enjoy considerable advantages over PKE, however. EO has the public's imagination behind it with the possibility of liquid water and extraterrestrial life existing there. The Solar Probe may answer longstanding issues of the heating and dynamics of the solar corona, which will imporove our understanding of solar flares, CMEs and the origin of the solar wind. Since much of today's economy relies upon the spacecraft buzzing over our heads, this mission has much practical value in its ability to help us understand and predict solar storms.
Of course these reasons hardly exempt either mission from being cancelled--they just queue them in front of missions whose sole objective is scientifc. With election-year politics and the ensuing silliness, I wouldn't bet on their fates.
It's probably only a matter of time before the NSA and the FBI (Carnivore, anyone?) decides to knock out these backbones to stop those awful, awful criminals from trafficking in "pirated music" and "child pornography". And then what will happen to our web?
Nah. You see, this Internet thing, aside from its intended purpose of trafficking all sorts of salaciousness, has the curious side effect of making a large number of people in the U.S. a great deal of money. Heaps and gobs of the stuff, in fact. And if there's one thing the U.S. government is addicted to it's mad cash flowing into the coffers. To suggest that they would pinch off the stream of greenbacks heading their way is like thinking a guy can stop peeing midstream. It just ain't gonna happen.
Slashdot for one, need to make a clear definition as to whats right and whats wrong.
/. and k5 enjoy? What about unjust laws? What about ambiguous areas of law? Do you really believe that ideas in a discussion forum should be censored solely because they do not fit with your definition of right and wrong?
/.ers are), then nobody will stop you from posting pro-RIAA essays. In fact, if your post is thoughtful and interesting many moderators will moderate you up if only to stimulate an interesting discussion. Most of us who read /. and k5 are quite capable of making moral and ethical decisions for ourselves and we are in little need of sanctimonious censors.
/. as a single entity with a single voice is inaccurate. A better characterization is one of a community of people with a shared interest in a collection of related topics. While many attitudes are shared by a plurality or even a majority of /.ers ("Microsoft sucks," "The Matrix was a fun, if silly, movie," "Jon Katz makes up too many new words."), opposing opinions can always be found within the Slashdot community. (Well, perhaps not with the Jon Katz word-coining issue).
Are you volunteering to lead this crew of Thought Police? What criteria do you propose we use to excise subversive posts--shall we use strict legality according to current U.S. law? What about the international audiences
Part of the charm of Slashdot and k5 is that these sites don't discriminate among its posters' ideas beyond the moderation imposed by its own readers. For example, if you are on the side of the RIAA in the Napster debate (and many
Speaking of
Most of the times, we are so hard to identify whats right or wrong.
That's because most of the time one cannot so narrowly determine the "rightness" of a given idea. Privacy is both right and wrong depending on circumstance and the value system of the one assessing its rightness. Copying software or music is both right and wrong--even the strict U.S. legal definition of "fair use" is a gray area. In fact, the continued existence of nuclear weapons is both right and wrong. (Is keeping an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction necessarily "wrong" if the weapons are never used, if total war is prevented by MAD, and if much human suffering is thereby circumvented?) In my mind the most interesting discussions are those where moral ambiguity arises. If I want someone else to make all these decisions for me, then I can just tune in to Rush Limbaugh.
Either I'm misunderstanding something, or the sterilization is done by the radiation from the plasma...
While I can't speak for the plasma device in question, I do know that many room-temperature plasmas devised for decontamination function by chemical means. The plasma forms highly reactive chemicals agents, such as oxygen free radicals, that can chemically alter target materials like sarin or VX.
Actually, since most of this is overhead anyway, you wouldn't save anything by laying off half your staff--the cost of your employees would just go up to 700k$/employee or so.
No serious scientist argues that there will be more than marginal scientific benefit to the ISS, and most of what benefit there is could be realized by the Space Shuttle more cheaply.
As a professional scientist and a habitual devil's advocate I choose to keep a somewhat more open mind on the issue. For better or worse the ISS is quite possibly going to be built, so we may as well challenge ourselves to think creatively on how best to use the ISS facility to do some good science. Only so much can be gained by bemoaning the misappropriation of funds, and at this stage of the game it's not very constructive. (Killing the ISS now would only sour the public on the space program and would do little for your cause of solar system exploration).
A unique aspect of the ISS environment is the ability it confers to do extended experiments in high quality microgravity conditions. As an example, one area of basic science research that can benefit greatly from this kind of environment is dusty plasma research; in dusty plasmas an experimenter may observe directly liquids and solids (plasma crystals) and thereby obtain a better understanding of pervasive phenomena such as melting and fracturing. Gravity plays a dominant role in dusty plasma dynamics on Earth, and experiments conducted on parabolic flights have shown many intriguing results. John Goree of the University of Iowa and his collaborators have championed a facility for performing dusty plasma experiments on the ISS, and when I last spoke with John this was slated to be one of the first experiments to be performed on the ISS.
The dusty plasma experiment is just one of many possibilities for the ISS facility, and it is an example of a pure-science experiment that cannot be performed as well in terrestrial or shuttle conditions. Undoubtedly one can make a case that the money could be better spent elsewhere, but I think this is counterproductive. The ISS is such splendid pork-barrel politics that it has little chance of dying. Rather than drown ourselves in pessimism, we are better off considering the money as spent and figuring out other interesting, if somewhat extravagent, experiments to do on the ISS. We just have to be a bit clever and opportunistic.
This reminds me of how the DOE labs do their accounting in terms of "Technical Staff Members" (TSMs). If I'm not mistaken, overhead costs are folded into the cost of an employee, so every employee winds up costing the organization ca. 300k$ to 400k$ irrespective of whether the employee is a journeyman welder or the leader of a nuclear weapons design team.
Great! Where do I sign up!
IIRC, applications for the astronaut training program are reviewed every two years in July; the next screening takes place approximately a year from now. You can find out more information and download application forms at NASA's astronaut selection website. Generally speaking, for admittance as a mission specialist you need to possess an advanced scientific, technical, or medical degree (PhDs and MDs are preferred) as well as demonstrate leadership in your particular field. (Most if not all of the pilots have prior military training, so a civilian's best shot into the program is as a mission specialist). Becoming a NASA astronaut is highly competitive and grueling, as I'm sure you can imagine, but since it is hands down the coolest job imaginable, it won't stop me from sending my application in.
While I'm sure this is a troll, some of the points raised are disturbing. I'll throw caution to the wind and feed the beast anyway....
Sorry for my ranting, but at the end of the day evolution is nothing more than a myth with only circumstantial "facts" to back it up, and it doesn't deserve to be taught to children who are blinded to this important difference.
While you may believe that the evidence in favor of evolution is suspect, I would counter that you have not objectively viewed the evidence in question. Furthermore, your viewpoint is in opposition to that of mainstream science and science education organizations, such as the AAAS and the AAPT, who have condemned the change in Kansas school standards. The burden is on you, my friend, to prove that the Christian mythos is necessarily a more consistent explanation of the facts than is evolution. It is not enough to sit back and say "Evolution is wrong, ergo the Christian myth is right." Please keep in mind that "the bible says so" will carry little weight in your argument; heliocentrists were condemned for decades by the church in part because the bible allegedly indicated that the earth was the center of the cosmos.
There are plenty more worthwhile projects we can do in space, ones with real scientific value.
Looking for the boundary of "Heaven?" Searching for "angels on high?" I shudder to think what one who has no understanding of how science is conducted would imagine space projects with "real scientific value" to be. I suppose you do not believe in geology either, that dinosaurs were just big beasts who wouldn't fit on the ark, the Big Bang theory is false, and that nuclear theory is suspect as well (can't have carbon dating indicating an age of a living entity that is older than the age of the universe). Do you object to the term "fossil fuel?"
Allow me to distinguish between science and religious scibabble for you: Science (in principle) follows the scientific method. You formulate a hypothesis, conduct experiments (such as this one) to test said hypothesis, and then you refine your hypothesis based on the results of the test. Sometimes this leads to the unpleasantness of having to scrap your "sexy brilliant idea" and start anew, and sometimes you just have to tweak the hypothesis somewhat to explain the data better. Then more experiments are conducted, and more refinement is performed. Eventually, when the hypothesis is good enough that it stands the test of numerous experiments it gets elevated to the status of "theory." A scientific theory is logically nothing more than a successful hypothesis, albeit one that has passed so many tests successfully that one may strongly suspect it to possess a measure of veracity. Scibabble (I shall use our good friends in Kansas as an example of scibabble at its best/worst) holds that "idea A, my pet idea, is contrary to idea B, which happens to be a scientific theory. I do not believe the weight of evidence in support of B--I shall call it all "circumstantial evidence"--therefore idea A must be correct." It is a position based on a logical fallacy, and as such its conclusions are suspect. When I attended grade school we indeed learned about "this important difference," however it would appear that you did not.
Thank God I come from somewhere where they value the difference between a theory and the Truth.
Kansas, perchance? I find it curious that you capitalize the word "truth"--perhaps you associate the notion of truth with biblical truth only? It must be difficult to do your taxes each year.... "Blast! Where's the 1040A section of Leviticus?!"
If my company gave me a computer for my home and then told me how I could use it, the motherfuckers better pay my ass $24/hr when I use the damn thing. My employer should have absolutely no say whatsoever about what I do when I am off the clock.
While I admire your strong sense of principle, I disagree with you regarding the fairness of the arrangement. I hate to argue over semantics, but in most cases, such as the organization I described in my earlier post, the machines are not intended as being "given" but rather as being "provided." They are the property of the employer, and as such they are intended to be used only in a manner that is approved by the employer. I see this as being no different from an employer providing me with other equipment to take home, be it a cell phone, company car, or ball point pen. If I don't like the rules on how I can use the equipment, then I can always just buy my own car, phone, pen, computer, PDA, etc. I just don't see how I am entitled, for example, to drive the company car on my vacation or to use their computer and fast net connection to surf pr0n if they don't permit it.
In my position I receive a fixed salary regardless of how long it takes me to do my job. If I want to leave early two days a week to play tennis, then I can do that and nobody will care. If I want to log in from home in the evening to check the status of a job that I launched earlier that day, then I rather like their having provided me with a machine and a fast connection to the lab with which to do this.
In my mind, as long as policies are straightforward, unambiguous, and reasonable, then I have no problems with abiding by them. If I do find them to be objectionable, then I can always find a new employer. I guess I missed your point--how exactly is this unjust and unfair?
I couldn't agree with you more regarding use of University facilities for pr0n downloads. A suggestion to the Harvard Divinity School (and to any organization who distributes computers for people's home uses) would be to do as the U.S. Department of Energy does, and that is, put a sticker on every machine that explicitly states the usage policy. This makes issues of perceived privacy easily resolvable by most anyone capable of logging in. Quoting from their policy:
"Notice to Users. This is a Federal computer system and is the property of the United States Government. it is for authorized use only. Users (authorized or unauthorized) have no explicit or implicit expectation of privacy."
No ambiguity here.
Using the company (or university) resources to surf pr0n is, in my mind, akin to using a company car to drive to the pr0n shop to pick up a few vids. If someone sees you and reports you to your organization, I don't see how privacy can keep you from getting fired if your organization so chooses.