...and are supposed to show that photons have mass, well they don't actually work.
No surprise. No measurements have demonstrated that photons have mass--in fact, they have been shown to have, if any mass, only an extremely small amount of mass. If the science-fair prop were to show that, then a call from Stockholm would follow not long after.
They rotate the wrong way as the heating effect caused by the solar radiation is vastly greater than the push from the photons:)
This doesn't make any sense. What is the "heating effect" to which you refer?
I understand that photons have momentum (or, classically, that a nonzero Poynting flux impinges on the vane surfaces), and that for optical frequencies roughly twice the momentum is imparted to the reflecting surface than the black surface by conservation of momentum. So one might guess that the vanes would rotate in the direction with the black faces moving forward. What is the mysterious "heating effect" that invalidates this argument?
I'm sorry if this sounds a bit insensitive, but if your company has a policy that does not allow personal browsing, calling, and emailing with their equipment, then you should not make these calls, browse the internet, etc. on their time. If you lose your job as a result of violating these policies, then you are not in a very sympathetic position.
If you can't run your errands without violating policy, then your errands simply don't get run. In principle you could always (a) get a cell-phone to make your personal calls, (b) go to a public library over your lunch hour to do your web browsing, (c) take a half day of vacation every time you have to stand in line at the DMV to get your license renewed.
That being said, most places will allow limited personal use of their equipment since it just makes good business sense to do this rather than be draconian in enforcing the policies. Probably the safest thing to do is get some clarification from your supervisor on what the policies are regarding personal use of the corporation's equipment and facilities.
I'm not sure what you mean by "balance" here, or by "sensationalism." Ostensibly the author could have written "While company X reads its employee email, company Y doesn't." This would seem to detract from the point of the article, which is to demonstrate via a case study what the current state of people's rights are regarding the internet and email. Law in the U.S. relies heavily on prior judgments; the outcome of one case may affect the outcome of all similar, subsequent cases. As such, the cases identified in the article are entirely relevant to the point being made.
Frankly, I find the whole notion that every piece of journalism must have "balance" to be silly, as it often gives undeserved weight to the fringe and this practice can reduce the credibility of the story rather than add to it. Would you require a journalist reporting on, say, the Holocaust to find a kind SS officer to balance the story of bulldozers and piles of bodies with a commentary on the merits of the "Final Solution?" Of course the privacy issue is far less tragic than the Holocaust, however the point is the same: "balance," while it is lauded in journalism schools, is not appropriate in some stories.
Of course boron is a bitch to work with experimentally, as it tends to build up a layer of gunk all over the inside of your device....
IIRC, Rostoker had an article in Science in the last few years where he proposed using an RFC (reversed field configuration) plasma device to accomplish fusion, with inverse cyclotrons to extract the energy of the alphas. It seemed much like the traditional "beam fusion" concepts, however, and I could never follow his argument on how he kept from scattering all the boron beam energy into the electrons.
Would anyone who has read the article care to set me straight? I seem to remember getting something like 6% fusion gain when I plugged in some optimistic numbers.
I'd rather not; I used to be a lecturer at this university, and I would like to avoid having any lawsuits brought against me. (Even though I can support what I said, I would prefer to avoid the hassle if possible). I will say that it is a university on the west coast of the U.S.A., and that "James" (she changed her name back after she graduated) got her degree from the mechanical engineering department there.
Apparently it was somewhat inconvenient for her to apply for jobs after graduation since some required her transcript. While a woman may easily explain a change in her last name, a change from, say, Robert to Sara would be suspect.
One of my classmates in physics graduate school received her engineering undergraduate degree from a top-10 engineering university. While attending this university she experienced one of the most egregious instances of gender discrimination I've heard of to date. This was in 1990, mind you, which is far closer to 2000 than 1950:
After taking a midterm examination in her engineering course, she was surprised to find a "Drop Form" attached to her exam when it was turned back to her. Apparently she was not alone: all six of the women in her class of 250 students had drop forms attached to their examinations. When questioned on the matter, her engineering professor stated that he didn't believe women could be good engineers so he was encouraging them to drop his course and find another major.
She promptly changed her first name to "James" to avoid further discrimination of this kind. The professor, while reprimanded by his department and dean, is still teaching at the same university, and I doubt his feelings towards female engineers has changed much. I believe it is safe to say that gender discrimination is alive and well today among some leading engineering universities.
...but education is not about impressive technology. It's about acquiring knowledge and learning to think, in which case libraries, pens, and paper are the clear winner, hands down.
Allow me, if you will, to play devil's advocate and propose that "study, reflection, and observation" are no longer vital skills; pattern recognition and the ability to assimilate at a superficial level preexisting knowledge seem to have replaced cognition as the key element of success. Except for a lucky few who do genuine creative work, for most in society it matters not whether one can come up with a fresh perspective on a given problem, but rather whether the problem can be recognized as being similar to another that has already been solved. We live in a society of shortcuts and heuristics; whoever has learned the most (and the most useful) shortcuts and heuristics is bound to be the most successful.
I'm not arguing that being able to reason is no longer useful, as it most certainly is of value in some circumstances, however it is secondary to, say, the ability to learn the latest software package after being shown how to perform the necessary operations. We want people who can follow procedure, who respond most favorably to "bulletized" instructions, people who feel restless and seek quick solutions after thoughts occupy their minds for more than fifteen seconds. Spending any longer on a problem is "wasting time," time that would be better spent consulting an expert for the answer. Unlike the past, described so eloquently by Glieck, experts are cheap--they are just a few mouse clicks away--so why not use them?
Teaching children at an early age to follow instructions without questioning them and to instinctively look to an expert/web browser for expertise are possibly the most valuable job skills we can give them.
As a snapshot of our times, we should include something that communicates our relationship with technology. I would suggest the text of the nuclear weapons FAQ, photographs of mushroom clouds, and the text of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (which the United States has yet to sign). Follow this with photographs of man walking on the moon, an exerpt of the human genome project, and perhaps one of those colorful maps of the World Wide Web.
We have lived for half a century with technology enabling us to wreak complete destruction on ourselves and our environment, yet we have demonstrated a similar capacity to work towards a common good. This has, to a large degree, defined us as a people and how we cope with these technologies will form an important part of our historical legasy. Which facet of the human animal will win out in the end is unclear, and how we will apply this technology to solving our current problems will be for historians of the future to determine.
I'm old enough to give the government a large chunk out of my paycheck, but I'm not old enough to vote.
Youths are protected under law more than adults are as well. E.g. contract law is different for minors than for adults. Similarly, the criminal justice system is different for minors than adults. The voting age has to be set somewhere, and 18 is as reasonable a place as any. I have been paying taxes since birth, however I think it would be folly to suggest that I was a qualified voter when I was, say, two years old. If we moved the voting age to 16, then what about bright 15-year-olds? If we move it to 15, what about those precocious 14-yr-olds?...
So apparently "no taxation without representation" no longer applies?
It never applied in the first place. While it served as a rallying cry during the early days of the U.S. revolution, it was never anything more than political rhetoric. O that my tax burden could be as light as it was during the days of the so-called "Intolerable Acts"....
As I mentioned before, if you genuinely want to influence public policy (rather than just complain about its unfairness) then you should become politically active. With almost complete certainty I can say that your one vote simply will not change the outcome in any political election you participate in for the rest of your life. However, if you work for a cause and can contribute to changing 100, 1000, 100,000 voters' minds on an issue, then your efforts will matter.
i am 16 and i can damn well understand the consequences of my actions better then a lot of the adults i know.
This I do not doubt. But I am surprised to see that you write lowercase 'i' in place of uppercase 'I'. Surely you are mature enough now to be an 'I' rather than an 'i'? ('i' is for the 12-yr-olds who can't ICQ).
i understand you'll have to take my word for it, but i cant believe they let some of the idiots (adults) in the USA (where I live) vote and I cant....I understand all those things, better then a lot of adults most probably, and I cant vote.
Not all of us adults in the USA are idiots.:)
Did all these "idiots" become that way after they turned 18, you think? If not, then if we lowered the voting age to 16 (but why stop there--how about 12?) wouldn't we have even more idiots voting?
If you think the system is unfair now, think of how it was for those who were drafted in some of our earlier wars in the U.S. They were old enough to go off and die for their country, however they were too young (under age 21) to vote for those who put them in harm's way to begin with. At least you can cast your vote in a couple of years rather than five years down the road.
Many ideas for election-screening have been considered: Some have argued for civics examinations of voters to prove their worthiness. However, there seems to be no fair way of doing this that doesn't offend one group or another. Some have argued that one should pay money for the right to vote, the idea being that whoever pays for the right to vote will value it more. This has the side-affect, however, that it discriminates against those with limited means or those whose racial groups encounter higher poll-taxes. Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" (the book, not the movie) had an interesting, if somewhat controversial, take--in order to vote one must first serve a tour of active duty in the military. A curious proposition indeed. The architects of the U.S. Constitution determined that just being a white, male, U.S. citizen was enough to qualify a voter. Again, this is an imperfect scheme since the percentage of women and minorities who are qualified to vote is significantly higher than that of qualified 16-yr olds. While the present system is not perfect, and it empowers some with the vote who undoubtedly do not have the best interests of the nation at heart, at least it has a modicum of fairness in its accessibility.
Incidentally, when you are too young to vote you can still participate in the political process by doing volunteer work for the candidates, parties, and referendums you believe in. In doing so you probably will have more than one vote's impact on the election outcome.
Sabotage is proactive. It's the one way that a person who doesn't have any power can make their convictions felt.
Talking to coworkers and management? Talking to the press? Posting a story on/.? Writing a congressperson? Joining and supporting a privacy special interests group? Quitting and working for a competitor who does not perform such immoral and unethical activities? I guess you're right--blowing up the factory is the only way you can "make your convictions felt." I feel sorry for your employer.
You and Signal11 are advocating performing "civil disobedience" by taking money to do that same thing that you find so unethical and immoral. Sure, you may drag your feet on the project a little, but you'll still cash that paycheck. This hardly places you or your cause in a sympathetic position.
The civil rights movement in the US being a classic example, by your standards civil disobedience would be for black people to boycott restaurants that refused to server them.
Notice that nobody introduced rat poison into the water supplies of the restaurants you mention. Nobody firebombed the places. Nobody threw bricks at restaurant patrons as they left the establishments. Dr. King did not advocate acting immorally to accomplish civil rights goals, despite the heavy-handed treatment he and his companions received from the peacekeepers of the day. Instead, the activities he supported were specifically designed to raise public sympathy for the movement, something your acts of sabotage will never do.
If a company is being unethical, solve the problem via technical means. If you work for the company, stall, drag your feet, and if you have to engineer the privacy-invading feature, remember these words "Yes, it's possible, but it would cost too much to do it".. and if they try anyway, make sure you're very well paid and that the product develops all kinds of bugs.. like suspicious dialog boxes in spyware that give your company's URL along with a "please report this error: Error collecting data on ${USER}, please contact sales@mycompany.com".
Balderdash. If a company is being unethical, your suggested remedy is to be unethical yourself? This view is myopic and unprofessional in the extreme, and it hardly qualifies as "civil disobedience."
Civil disobedience would be to resign before you commit immoral acts and to bear the consequences of your convictions.
There are many possible scenarios, not all of which would be as annoying as the "prompt me before sending cookies" that you refer to.
For instance, an option could be to accept all potential web bugs, but store the information (page the had the bug, site requesting the info, lists of cookies planted on your HD, etc.) in a separate file that could be read at your leisure to figure out what bugs you may have encountered. This would be transparent to the user, and would allow him or her to periodically obtain more sites to add to junkbuster or somesuch.
It's just a thought, and given how open source lets folks tinker, it might be an entertaining extension to one of the open source browsers.
Perhaps one of the open source web browsers could be modified to provide a feature that automatically warns a user if he/she encounters a page with a possible web bug, and queries whether the user wants to follow the link? At the very least this would allow interested parties to monitor who is using this new technology, and it would make open source products more attractive to those who have an interest in maintaining their privacy.
2.Two piles of code are considered linked if one will crash or cease to provide more than 90% of its functions without the other.
Your suggestions are very interesting and timely, given the current environment. This "90% of its functions" will be difficult to define in a transparent manner, however. What constitutes a function? Do trivial functions count? If we act on simply "number of features that are disabled if we unlink," then I think we are missing the point--one could in principle just code up a bunch of meaningless buttons on a hidden panel in a front end to circumvent the license. What you may want is to define something along the lines of "core functionality" and determine whether maintaining such functionality requires the GPL-licenced linking--of course then we are left with more terms to define.
Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed response to my question. I would indeed be interested in the references you mentioned--feel free to email me or post them as you see fit.
"...just what commercial spinoffs have resulted specifically from LEO research? "
Note, before we get inundated with all the "tang" "velcro" etc. posts, that I not asking about technologies developed for the space program, but rather technologies that developed as the direct result of research in LEO.
(Incidentally, Tang was merely popularized by the space program, and was not developed for it).
This is related to your last comment, regarding "low-grav manufacturing:"
I have heard much rhetoric in support of the shuttle program (and lately the ISS) that cites advances in crystal growth, drug research, fancy new materials, etc., that could come from research in LEO, but I can't for the life of me identify any tangible advances that have been made. I'd like, if someone here is in the know, to be set straight on the matter if possible--just what commercial spinoffs have resulted specifically from LEO research?
If LEO is indeed useful commercially, just how good of microgravity conditions are needed? Can parabolic-flight aircraft suffice? How about drop towers, which can provide quite good microgravity, albeit for a limited duration?
Can anyone recommend a good web site with this information? Thanks.
It is fortunate that this happened in Kansas, where natural selection is a fiction, or else we may have concluded by the scant showing that Linux in an inferior OS, and thus unfit to survive.
Instead we can blame it on divine providence: God hates Linux geeks, so she cursed the show.
Great rant. I especially liked the "more intelligent than thou" tone--it should go over very well here. Kids, watch and learn. This is how it's done.
...I don't think even the Slashdot crowd would seriously try to argue against the proposition that the graduating class of Harvard Law School each year represents the cream of the nation's intellect.
Man, you've got me laughing hard now with that "cream of the intellect" bit. Careful, though--if you go too far over the top you'll lose your audience.
...Law is for the lawyers, and the more comlicated it is, the fucken better, because that way, only highly paid specialists will be able to practice it.
Ah, nice recovery. A little morsel of pseudowisdom to round out the dish. A bit of ingenious programming after your barrage. Bravo.
So my question is: how appropriate is it for people to use their website as a medium to raise consciousness and solicit donations for whatever cause they are currently supporting?
One could argue that this at least as topical as all the frighteningly lame April Fools stories. Fringe topics often find their way into mainstream media if only to provide some variety.
And another one: are there some issues which are so important that they should headline any/all forms of media, regardless of the subject matter usually addressed by that media?
By all means. Whenever the "Buy Claudius More Doritos" fund gets precariously low, it is imperative for the story to supersede all these silly "Wah--I have to pay a whole extra dime for my gas" stories.
People really need to get a grip.
p.s. Too bad about them penguins. p.p.s Just what the heck does "Nacho Cheesier" mean, anyway?
You seem to think that the NY Times is both legally liable and under an obligation to the government to report information on what their sources are. Neither is true.
I fail to see how this follows from my most recent post. I have asserted that an investigation should be made of this matter since clearly classified documents were compromised:
1) Secret documents were leaked to the press. Either someone in the press with authorization to access the documents leaked the information to those without access, or else someone outside the NYTimes organization leaked the information to journalists who have no authorization to access the information.
2) At some point information that was classified was leaked to individuals who lack the authorization to peruse the documents. In other words, at some point someone broke the law in giving the documents to those without authorization.
3) When someone breaks the law in this fashion, the FBI is often called in to investigate the matter.
4) 1) through 3) imply that it is consistent for the FBI to investigate this leak of information, and an obvious first place to investigate, besides the organization responsible for drafting the document in question, is the news agency who distributed the information.
Thank you for your very kind civics lesson; I hope you permit me to return the favor: While the NYTimes staff may indeed be innocent of all wrongdoing, this is neither for you nor me to determine. This is for the judicial system to determine if, after an investigation is made, enough evidence surfaces to warrant a case being brought up before the courts. Please note that I am only suggesting an investigation of an obvious compromise of classified information be done, and not that jack-booted fiends break into the NYTimes offices to start breaking the fingers of those who don't "volunteer" information on their sources.
While it is possible that nobody at the NYTimes is at fault, an investigation should still be made to find out who leaked the document to the press. The last time I checked it was illegal to share classified information with those who lack the clearance to view such information and the need to know. I find it hard to believe that everyone on the editorial staff at the NYTimes would fall into that category.
This case is fundamentally different from the one you cite in that in this case a classified document was passed to a news agency by someone; in United States vs. The Progressive the information was obtained from the public domain and from deduction based on known physical laws, and not on compromised documents. I'm suggesting an investigation should be made on how the documents were compromised in the first place.
Have you ever considered that, in a nation where 'We the People' are sovereign, it is a blight upon that sovereignty that so many ideas and data are kept from their knowledge?
You raise a very interesting and important point, and yes I have considered this in some detail. However it is somewhat tangential to my original post. Like you, I neither condone the activities of the U.S. or U.K. governments, nor do I believe that information like this should be kept from the people who make decisions, if even the decision on whom to vote for. I am merely pointing out that for whatever reason this information was classified Secret, which means that only a restricted body of individuals may access the information, and the information may not be shared among those who lack sufficient clearance. If this material still holds a Secret classification, then it is illegal to allow individuals to access this information. While we may debate whether the material was classified correctly, whether the public had a right to know this information, or even whether any organization should have the right to hide such information from the public, while it holds a Secret classification it needs to be protected in accordance with this classification level. Individuals who violate these laws go to jail, and I don't see why those who wear press badges are necessarily exempt.
The point of my post was the following apparent inconsistency: When one body misplaces Secret information we raise a huge ruckus, whereas when another body mishandles information with the same level of classification, then it's ok since "It is in the interests of the people." I would argue that for classification to have any meaning whatsoever, then leaks of classified information to the press must be prosecuted with the same intensity as what the New Mexico lab is experiencing.
Secrecy has few places in a true democracy or republic.
(A most curious stance on a site that champions privacy and the right to encrypt). Secrecy has its places, however it is dangerous to a democracy or republic to cede to secrecy too much power. I agree that the immoral acts of the U.S. and U.K. governments are disgusting and the public is better off knowing than not knowing about such things, however I also acknowledge that we have many secrets (e.g. biological weapons secrets) that are much better off being out of the public domain. As a consequence, I would argue that we should vigorously protect our national secrets as a point of principle, and we should call for reform to the classification system so that it cannot be abused.
And while you're at it, don't forget to run rough shod over the first amendment and freedom of the press.
I never called for anything of the sort; all I am advocating is that we hold journalists to the same laws as the rest of us.
Slashdot Mirror
...and are supposed to show that photons have mass, well they don't actually work.
:)
No surprise. No measurements have demonstrated that photons have mass--in fact, they have been shown to have, if any mass, only an extremely small amount of mass. If the science-fair prop were to show that, then a call from Stockholm would follow not long after.
They rotate the wrong way as the heating effect caused by the solar radiation is vastly greater than the push from the photons
This doesn't make any sense. What is the "heating effect" to which you refer?
I understand that photons have momentum (or, classically, that a nonzero Poynting flux impinges on the vane surfaces), and that for optical frequencies roughly twice the momentum is imparted to the reflecting surface than the black surface by conservation of momentum. So one might guess that the vanes would rotate in the direction with the black faces moving forward. What is the mysterious "heating effect" that invalidates this argument?
But it looks cool anyway.
Well, we agree on this anyway.
I'm sorry if this sounds a bit insensitive, but if your company has a policy that does not allow personal browsing, calling, and emailing with their equipment, then you should not make these calls, browse the internet, etc. on their time. If you lose your job as a result of violating these policies, then you are not in a very sympathetic position.
If you can't run your errands without violating policy, then your errands simply don't get run. In principle you could always (a) get a cell-phone to make your personal calls, (b) go to a public library over your lunch hour to do your web browsing, (c) take a half day of vacation every time you have to stand in line at the DMV to get your license renewed.
That being said, most places will allow limited personal use of their equipment since it just makes good business sense to do this rather than be draconian in enforcing the policies. Probably the safest thing to do is get some clarification from your supervisor on what the policies are regarding personal use of the corporation's equipment and facilities.
I'm not sure what you mean by "balance" here, or by "sensationalism." Ostensibly the author could have written "While company X reads its employee email, company Y doesn't." This would seem to detract from the point of the article, which is to demonstrate via a case study what the current state of people's rights are regarding the internet and email. Law in the U.S. relies heavily on prior judgments; the outcome of one case may affect the outcome of all similar, subsequent cases. As such, the cases identified in the article are entirely relevant to the point being made.
Frankly, I find the whole notion that every piece of journalism must have "balance" to be silly, as it often gives undeserved weight to the fringe and this practice can reduce the credibility of the story rather than add to it. Would you require a journalist reporting on, say, the Holocaust to find a kind SS officer to balance the story of bulldozers and piles of bodies with a commentary on the merits of the "Final Solution?" Of course the privacy issue is far less tragic than the Holocaust, however the point is the same: "balance," while it is lauded in journalism schools, is not appropriate in some stories.
Gah! Ick! That had to have been one of the worst pieces of shite that has ever been written.
Agreed. For a better "back to the moon" story I'd suggest Baxter's Moonseed.
I'm rather fond of p + B-11 -> 3 He-4 + 8.7 MeV.
Of course boron is a bitch to work with experimentally, as it tends to build up a layer of gunk all over the inside of your device....
IIRC, Rostoker had an article in Science in the last few years where he proposed using an RFC (reversed field configuration) plasma device to accomplish fusion, with inverse cyclotrons to extract the energy of the alphas. It seemed much like the traditional "beam fusion" concepts, however, and I could never follow his argument on how he kept from scattering all the boron beam energy into the electrons.
Would anyone who has read the article care to set me straight? I seem to remember getting something like 6% fusion gain when I plugged in some optimistic numbers.
I'd rather not; I used to be a lecturer at this university, and I would like to avoid having any lawsuits brought against me. (Even though I can support what I said, I would prefer to avoid the hassle if possible). I will say that it is a university on the west coast of the U.S.A., and that "James" (she changed her name back after she graduated) got her degree from the mechanical engineering department there.
Apparently it was somewhat inconvenient for her to apply for jobs after graduation since some required her transcript. While a woman may easily explain a change in her last name, a change from, say, Robert to Sara would be suspect.
One of my classmates in physics graduate school received her engineering undergraduate degree from a top-10 engineering university. While attending this university she experienced one of the most egregious instances of gender discrimination I've heard of to date. This was in 1990, mind you, which is far closer to 2000 than 1950:
After taking a midterm examination in her engineering course, she was surprised to find a "Drop Form" attached to her exam when it was turned back to her. Apparently she was not alone: all six of the women in her class of 250 students had drop forms attached to their examinations. When questioned on the matter, her engineering professor stated that he didn't believe women could be good engineers so he was encouraging them to drop his course and find another major.
She promptly changed her first name to "James" to avoid further discrimination of this kind. The professor, while reprimanded by his department and dean, is still teaching at the same university, and I doubt his feelings towards female engineers has changed much. I believe it is safe to say that gender discrimination is alive and well today among some leading engineering universities.
An excerpt from the article:
...but education is not about impressive technology. It's about acquiring knowledge and learning to think, in which case libraries, pens, and paper are the clear winner, hands down.
Allow me, if you will, to play devil's advocate and propose that "study, reflection, and observation" are no longer vital skills; pattern recognition and the ability to assimilate at a superficial level preexisting knowledge seem to have replaced cognition as the key element of success. Except for a lucky few who do genuine creative work, for most in society it matters not whether one can come up with a fresh perspective on a given problem, but rather whether the problem can be recognized as being similar to another that has already been solved. We live in a society of shortcuts and heuristics; whoever has learned the most (and the most useful) shortcuts and heuristics is bound to be the most successful.
I'm not arguing that being able to reason is no longer useful, as it most certainly is of value in some circumstances, however it is secondary to, say, the ability to learn the latest software package after being shown how to perform the necessary operations. We want people who can follow procedure, who respond most favorably to "bulletized" instructions, people who feel restless and seek quick solutions after thoughts occupy their minds for more than fifteen seconds. Spending any longer on a problem is "wasting time," time that would be better spent consulting an expert for the answer. Unlike the past, described so eloquently by Glieck, experts are cheap--they are just a few mouse clicks away--so why not use them?
Teaching children at an early age to follow instructions without questioning them and to instinctively look to an expert/web browser for expertise are possibly the most valuable job skills we can give them.
As a snapshot of our times, we should include something that communicates our relationship with technology. I would suggest the text of the nuclear weapons FAQ, photographs of mushroom clouds, and the text of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (which the United States has yet to sign). Follow this with photographs of man walking on the moon, an exerpt of the human genome project, and perhaps one of those colorful maps of the World Wide Web.
We have lived for half a century with technology enabling us to wreak complete destruction on ourselves and our environment, yet we have demonstrated a similar capacity to work towards a common good. This has, to a large degree, defined us as a people and how we cope with these technologies will form an important part of our historical legasy. Which facet of the human animal will win out in the end is unclear, and how we will apply this technology to solving our current problems will be for historians of the future to determine.
I'm old enough to give the government a large chunk out of my paycheck, but I'm not old enough to vote.
Youths are protected under law more than adults are as well. E.g. contract law is different for minors than for adults. Similarly, the criminal justice system is different for minors than adults. The voting age has to be set somewhere, and 18 is as reasonable a place as any. I have been paying taxes since birth, however I think it would be folly to suggest that I was a qualified voter when I was, say, two years old. If we moved the voting age to 16, then what about bright 15-year-olds? If we move it to 15, what about those precocious 14-yr-olds?...
So apparently "no taxation without representation" no longer applies?
It never applied in the first place. While it served as a rallying cry during the early days of the U.S. revolution, it was never anything more than political rhetoric. O that my tax burden could be as light as it was during the days of the so-called "Intolerable Acts"....
As I mentioned before, if you genuinely want to influence public policy (rather than just complain about its unfairness) then you should become politically active. With almost complete certainty I can say that your one vote simply will not change the outcome in any political election you participate in for the rest of your life. However, if you work for a cause and can contribute to changing 100, 1000, 100,000 voters' minds on an issue, then your efforts will matter.
Political activism is not closed to minors.
i am 16 and i can damn well understand the consequences of my actions better then a lot of the adults i know.
:)
This I do not doubt. But I am surprised to see that you write lowercase 'i' in place of uppercase 'I'. Surely you are mature enough now to be an 'I' rather than an 'i'? ('i' is for the 12-yr-olds who can't ICQ).
i understand you'll have to take my word for it, but i cant believe they let some of the idiots (adults) in the USA (where I live) vote and I cant....I understand all those things, better then a lot of adults most probably, and I cant vote.
Not all of us adults in the USA are idiots.
Did all these "idiots" become that way after they turned 18, you think? If not, then if we lowered the voting age to 16 (but why stop there--how about 12?) wouldn't we have even more idiots voting?
If you think the system is unfair now, think of how it was for those who were drafted in some of our earlier wars in the U.S. They were old enough to go off and die for their country, however they were too young (under age 21) to vote for those who put them in harm's way to begin with. At least you can cast your vote in a couple of years rather than five years down the road.
Many ideas for election-screening have been considered: Some have argued for civics examinations of voters to prove their worthiness. However, there seems to be no fair way of doing this that doesn't offend one group or another. Some have argued that one should pay money for the right to vote, the idea being that whoever pays for the right to vote will value it more. This has the side-affect, however, that it discriminates against those with limited means or those whose racial groups encounter higher poll-taxes. Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" (the book, not the movie) had an interesting, if somewhat controversial, take--in order to vote one must first serve a tour of active duty in the military. A curious proposition indeed. The architects of the U.S. Constitution determined that just being a white, male, U.S. citizen was enough to qualify a voter. Again, this is an imperfect scheme since the percentage of women and minorities who are qualified to vote is significantly higher than that of qualified 16-yr olds. While the present system is not perfect, and it empowers some with the vote who undoubtedly do not have the best interests of the nation at heart, at least it has a modicum of fairness in its accessibility.
Incidentally, when you are too young to vote you can still participate in the political process by doing volunteer work for the candidates, parties, and referendums you believe in. In doing so you probably will have more than one vote's impact on the election outcome.
Sabotage is proactive. It's the one way that a person who doesn't have any power can make their convictions felt.
/.? Writing a congressperson? Joining and supporting a privacy special interests group? Quitting and working for a competitor who does not perform such immoral and unethical activities? I guess you're right--blowing up the factory is the only way you can "make your convictions felt." I feel sorry for your employer.
Talking to coworkers and management? Talking to the press? Posting a story on
You and Signal11 are advocating performing "civil disobedience" by taking money to do that same thing that you find so unethical and immoral. Sure, you may drag your feet on the project a little, but you'll still cash that paycheck. This hardly places you or your cause in a sympathetic position.
The civil rights movement in the US being a classic example, by your standards civil disobedience would be for black people to boycott restaurants that refused to server them.
Notice that nobody introduced rat poison into the water supplies of the restaurants you mention. Nobody firebombed the places. Nobody threw bricks at restaurant patrons as they left the establishments. Dr. King did not advocate acting immorally to accomplish civil rights goals, despite the heavy-handed treatment he and his companions received from the peacekeepers of the day. Instead, the activities he supported were specifically designed to raise public sympathy for the movement, something your acts of sabotage will never do.
If a company is being unethical, solve the problem via technical means. If you work for the company, stall, drag your feet, and if you have to engineer the privacy-invading feature, remember these words "Yes, it's possible, but it would cost too much to do it".. and if they try anyway, make sure you're very well paid and that the product develops all kinds of bugs.. like suspicious dialog boxes in spyware that give your company's URL along with a "please report this error: Error collecting data on ${USER}, please contact sales@mycompany.com".
Balderdash. If a company is being unethical, your suggested remedy is to be unethical yourself? This view is myopic and unprofessional in the extreme, and it hardly qualifies as "civil disobedience."
Civil disobedience would be to resign before you commit immoral acts and to bear the consequences of your convictions.
Remember: no company can survive without people.
Even people who commit acts of sabotage?
There are many possible scenarios, not all of which would be as annoying as the "prompt me before sending cookies" that you refer to.
For instance, an option could be to accept all potential web bugs, but store the information (page the had the bug, site requesting the info, lists of cookies planted on your HD, etc.) in a separate file that could be read at your leisure to figure out what bugs you may have encountered. This would be transparent to the user, and would allow him or her to periodically obtain more sites to add to junkbuster or somesuch.
It's just a thought, and given how open source lets folks tinker, it might be an entertaining extension to one of the open source browsers.
Perhaps one of the open source web browsers could be modified to provide a feature that automatically warns a user if he/she encounters a page with a possible web bug, and queries whether the user wants to follow the link? At the very least this would allow interested parties to monitor who is using this new technology, and it would make open source products more attractive to those who have an interest in maintaining their privacy.
2.Two piles of code are considered linked if one will crash or cease to provide more than 90% of its functions without the other.
Your suggestions are very interesting and timely, given the current environment. This "90% of its functions" will be difficult to define in a transparent manner, however. What constitutes a function? Do trivial functions count? If we act on simply "number of features that are disabled if we unlink," then I think we are missing the point--one could in principle just code up a bunch of meaningless buttons on a hidden panel in a front end to circumvent the license. What you may want is to define something along the lines of "core functionality" and determine whether maintaining such functionality requires the GPL-licenced linking--of course then we are left with more terms to define.
Good luck fleshing out your straw man.
Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed response to my question. I would indeed be interested in the references you mentioned--feel free to email me or post them as you see fit.
"...just what commercial spinoffs have resulted specifically from LEO research? "
Note, before we get inundated with all the "tang" "velcro" etc. posts, that I not asking about technologies developed for the space program, but rather technologies that developed as the direct result of research in LEO.
(Incidentally, Tang was merely popularized by the space program, and was not developed for it).
This is related to your last comment, regarding "low-grav manufacturing:"
I have heard much rhetoric in support of the shuttle program (and lately the ISS) that cites advances in crystal growth, drug research, fancy new materials, etc., that could come from research in LEO, but I can't for the life of me identify any tangible advances that have been made. I'd like, if someone here is in the know, to be set straight on the matter if possible--just what commercial spinoffs have resulted specifically from LEO research?
If LEO is indeed useful commercially, just how good of microgravity conditions are needed? Can parabolic-flight aircraft suffice? How about drop towers, which can provide quite good microgravity, albeit for a limited duration?
Can anyone recommend a good web site with this information? Thanks.
It is fortunate that this happened in Kansas, where natural selection is a fiction, or else we may have concluded by the scant showing that Linux in an inferior OS, and thus unfit to survive.
Instead we can blame it on divine providence: God hates Linux geeks, so she cursed the show.
Great rant. I especially liked the "more intelligent than thou" tone--it should go over very well here. Kids, watch and learn. This is how it's done.
...I don't think even the Slashdot crowd would seriously try to argue against the proposition that the graduating class of Harvard Law School each year represents the cream of the nation's intellect.
...Law is for the lawyers, and the more comlicated it is, the fucken better, because that way, only highly paid specialists will be able to practice it.
Man, you've got me laughing hard now with that "cream of the intellect" bit. Careful, though--if you go too far over the top you'll lose your audience.
Ah, nice recovery. A little morsel of pseudowisdom to round out the dish. A bit of ingenious programming after your barrage. Bravo.
So my question is: how appropriate is it for people to use their website as a medium to raise consciousness and solicit donations for whatever cause they are currently supporting?
One could argue that this at least as topical as all the frighteningly lame April Fools stories. Fringe topics often find their way into mainstream media if only to provide some variety.
And another one: are there some issues which are so important that they should headline any/all forms of media, regardless of the subject matter usually addressed by that media?
By all means. Whenever the "Buy Claudius More Doritos" fund gets precariously low, it is imperative for the story to supersede all these silly "Wah--I have to pay a whole extra dime for my gas" stories.
People really need to get a grip.
p.s. Too bad about them penguins.
p.p.s Just what the heck does "Nacho Cheesier" mean, anyway?
You seem to think that the NY Times is both legally liable and under an obligation to the government to report information on what their sources are. Neither is true.
I fail to see how this follows from my most recent post. I have asserted that an investigation should be made of this matter since clearly classified documents were compromised:
1) Secret documents were leaked to the press. Either someone in the press with authorization to access the documents leaked the information to those without access, or else someone outside the NYTimes organization leaked the information to journalists who have no authorization to access the information.
2) At some point information that was classified was leaked to individuals who lack the authorization to peruse the documents. In other words, at some point someone broke the law in giving the documents to those without authorization.
3) When someone breaks the law in this fashion, the FBI is often called in to investigate the matter.
4) 1) through 3) imply that it is consistent for the FBI to investigate this leak of information, and an obvious first place to investigate, besides the organization responsible for drafting the document in question, is the news agency who distributed the information.
Thank you for your very kind civics lesson; I hope you permit me to return the favor: While the NYTimes staff may indeed be innocent of all wrongdoing, this is neither for you nor me to determine. This is for the judicial system to determine if, after an investigation is made, enough evidence surfaces to warrant a case being brought up before the courts. Please note that I am only suggesting an investigation of an obvious compromise of classified information be done, and not that jack-booted fiends break into the NYTimes offices to start breaking the fingers of those who don't "volunteer" information on their sources.
While it is possible that nobody at the NYTimes is at fault, an investigation should still be made to find out who leaked the document to the press. The last time I checked it was illegal to share classified information with those who lack the clearance to view such information and the need to know. I find it hard to believe that everyone on the editorial staff at the NYTimes would fall into that category.
This case is fundamentally different from the one you cite in that in this case a classified document was passed to a news agency by someone; in United States vs. The Progressive the information was obtained from the public domain and from deduction based on known physical laws, and not on compromised documents. I'm suggesting an investigation should be made on how the documents were compromised in the first place.
Have you ever considered that, in a nation where 'We the People' are sovereign, it is a blight upon that sovereignty that so many ideas and data are kept from their knowledge?
You raise a very interesting and important point, and yes I have considered this in some detail. However it is somewhat tangential to my original post. Like you, I neither condone the activities of the U.S. or U.K. governments, nor do I believe that information like this should be kept from the people who make decisions, if even the decision on whom to vote for. I am merely pointing out that for whatever reason this information was classified Secret, which means that only a restricted body of individuals may access the information, and the information may not be shared among those who lack sufficient clearance. If this material still holds a Secret classification, then it is illegal to allow individuals to access this information. While we may debate whether the material was classified correctly, whether the public had a right to know this information, or even whether any organization should have the right to hide such information from the public, while it holds a Secret classification it needs to be protected in accordance with this classification level. Individuals who violate these laws go to jail, and I don't see why those who wear press badges are necessarily exempt.
The point of my post was the following apparent inconsistency: When one body misplaces Secret information we raise a huge ruckus, whereas when another body mishandles information with the same level of classification, then it's ok since "It is in the interests of the people." I would argue that for classification to have any meaning whatsoever, then leaks of classified information to the press must be prosecuted with the same intensity as what the New Mexico lab is experiencing.
Secrecy has few places in a true democracy or republic.
(A most curious stance on a site that champions privacy and the right to encrypt). Secrecy has its places, however it is dangerous to a democracy or republic to cede to secrecy too much power. I agree that the immoral acts of the U.S. and U.K. governments are disgusting and the public is better off knowing than not knowing about such things, however I also acknowledge that we have many secrets (e.g. biological weapons secrets) that are much better off being out of the public domain. As a consequence, I would argue that we should vigorously protect our national secrets as a point of principle, and we should call for reform to the classification system so that it cannot be abused.
And while you're at it, don't forget to run rough shod over the first amendment and freedom of the press.
I never called for anything of the sort; all I am advocating is that we hold journalists to the same laws as the rest of us.