The term "law" is outdated terminology in science: it typically meant an empirically determined rule, with or without explanation. So it is / was a set of observations, rather than an explanation. Its too easily confused with theory and the term is avoided today.
The era of Laws in science, mostly the 18th and 19th centuries, was when many "Laws" were discovered, but the underlying theories were not known. They were a useful stepping stone to codifying our knowledge, but should not be confused with theory.
Possibly the Slashdot demographic isn't the run-out-and-buy-the-latest-top-40-hit crowd. I probably bought one single for every 10-20 LPs I bought.
Is there still a Top40? I mean, that people can name musicians on, rather than a manipulated sales list up on a website somewhere? Once upon a time, "Top of the Pops", giving the top40, was one of the biggest programs on BBC TV. Ok, it lost its market to MTV, but really it died when the labels dropped their midlists in the late 1990s -early 2000s. They dropped over 80% of their _profitable_ artists, concentrating on the few big earners. Now, there aren't enough new songs out there to stage a Top40 show every week, least one that people want to watch (rather than fill the hours on MTV).
If RIAA gave me vouchers for 4 new albums from 2011 or 2012 for free, I couldn't name any music I would want.
So, I go to gigs and buy CDs there if the band is any good. RIAA should be ashamed of themselves for how bad a job they are doing at promoting and selling music. Their top-5 only model collapsed on them, and they should stop blaming piracy.
Now, I may not like X-factor, etc. but there would have been _something_ out there. I used to cringe at some of the "oldie" material that made the Top40 in Ireland etc when I was growing up, but it was bought by people. The equivalent music isn't there for someone who doesn't want the top 3 songs that make RIAA the most profit.
We actually run weather and climate models for Mars, now. Currently we've run models on Mars, Titan and Venus, based on Earth weather models. Its a good check on whether the models are right: physics is physics, and bar changing some specific details (water -> methane, CO2 condenses out on Mars, etc) if the model doesn't work on Mars, somethings wrong with the model.
Power generator to drive chain, an electric car converts 69% of the energy to motion. Hydrogen: just over 30%, the last time I looked.
When you're running short of (easy) energy, electric wins hands down. Secondly, there is a lot of competition out there on electricity-generating methods: coal, oil, wind, nuclear, solar... just about everybody is getting into the Electricity business. Hydrogen, OTOH, has the advantage that it looks like oil, if you're in the oil business: swap petrol for hydrogen gas, you still have gas stations, you still have thousands of miles of pipes to install. If you're Exxon, you'll like hydrogen, but Electricity is a different kettle of fish: other utilities already have that transmission bit sewn up.
Reusing internal combustion technology is irrelevant in this bigger picture.
For the most part, people have been moving to mass transit and more cycling (better cycle lanes), rather than renewable fuels. Also, people are moving more into cities, and investments are being made to make them more livable.
All the mass transit / cycle lanes, etc investments are paid for by... fuel taxes.
In the event of a sudden crunch (eg. oh, a war in the middle East) and oil rises dramatically, it becomes possible for (more) people to switch from cars to buses. Also, the government can temporarily drop the fuel tax to stabilise matters for its citizens; and/or subsidize the poor (e.g. for home heating oil). These actions aren't available otherwise.
Dramatic moves to renewable fuels weren't expected this side of the Atlantic (by anyone sane). Do the numbers: there's no way of growing that much biofuels without substituting for food. Its really only pushed as an answer in the US where solutions of moving away from automobiles is not seen as politically possible.
Muphry's law is an adage that states that "if you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written". The name is a deliberate misspelling of Murphy's law.
I was just pointing out 'bylaws' are kind of the opposite of 'byelaws': they're local laws that, barring exceptions, cannot be prosecuted criminally.
Caution: IANAL, I know some Irish law which is derived from British law but British law may have changed, but exceptions are possible only when the DPP says so. In particular the DPP gives a blanket permission for certain crimes to be prosecuted "in its name", e.g. speeding. So a local council can set the speed limit on a road to 30mph (by byelaws, which don't need to go through Parliament), and prosecute them criminally in the name of the DPP, but if they make spitting on main st. illegal, they can impose a fine (non-criminal) but no further.
So normally, the Aldrych 4 could expect to be (1) told to leave (for trespassing). No proceedings if they just agreed and left, or worse (2) fined, no criminal record. That an arbitrarily hard punishment is enforced on them is immoral.
Bylaws are local council ( or in this case transport authority) laws. Fines can be levied, etc. but they cannot be criminally prosecuted : the local authority can bring you to court, but not criminal court; for that a case has to be prepared by the police for the Director of Public Prosecutions (an independent prosecutor).
Within that timeframe, everyone will already have one; a smart phone.
Think of the "smart TV" as having a web api: you see a second screen icon on your 'phone, drag a video onto it, the TV (in reality a computer) starts displaying that: pulling content directly not necessarily "X forwarded" (it would be insane wasting wireless bandwidth in the house supplying a heavy bandwidth SuperHD device that-sits-in-one-place. Control it by wifi, but its main content over a wire.
Kids these days. Its "Film at 11". Back in the day when film was this stuff that needed processing, they would take a film camera, film the event, bring it back and show it. But it wouldn't make the 6 O'clock news; it would typically be ready by 11pm. Hence "film at 11".
By ""fundamental human right" it means that nobody should be allowed deny you this.
For example the debate over whether Internet access should be a right. Nobody is suggesting that I should get Internet for free, or that the government should pay my broadband bill, but rather that it should be unconstitutional for there to be a law denying me access to the internet (e.g. the HADOPI law in France, three strikes laws, etc.), because today its effectively necessary to participate in democracy: (e.g. this discussion is not happening in a Town Hall. Its happening on the 'net. Its where people talk and become educated as to whats going on, and formulate their opinions, etc). Similarly, many other public services are becoming primarily provided over the net only. To be net-deprived is becoming a major handicap in western society.
Another example would be food: I have a right to food, that would mean denying me that right is a major infringement, but doesn't necessarily mean you have to feed me...
The GSM standards as originally developed were deliberately chosen to work on bands (900 MHz , IIRC) that in the US were assigned to the military. That is, to be initially incompatible and unusable in the US, so as to split the world into "US" and "rest", and give non-US developers a head start. It worked...
This is part of the paradox of a two-party political system designed towards gridlock / consensus.
The Democrats will always get the support of the Republicans going to war, but not vice versa. The Republicans will get the support of the democrats in ending wars.
So, its Democrats who are in power when wars start, Republicans when they end... (mostly)
I have yet to see anyone propose a standard that actually doesn't use more electricity(which comes from coal) to create a cleaner future.
Everywhere else, people are moving towards electricity for a cleaner future.
There are plenty of ways of generating clean electricity: nuclear, wind, tidal, biomass, hydro, solar... even, if they get the budgets right, "clean" coal with carbon capture (from what i've seen, I think the tech. works, but not the finances).
Secondly, even with mainline coal-powered generation, greater generation efficiency can mean that coal-powered electrical vehicles create less co2/km than gasoline.
How about: does it suffer? Does creating a "human" inside a device where it can presumably sense, but have no limbs or autonomy consitute torture? Can you turn it off?
Why is "being natural" a defining answer to these questions?
Expand the petroleum infrastructure: In the US (and Europe) car ownership per capita peaked in 2004. Absolute car numbers have been in decline since 2008 in the US. Not only can you move away from the car, its already happening.
Plan for it. Zone so that town and city centers are dense enough to undo the need for most car journeys. This has been happening in (parts of ) Europe for decades now.
Do public investment for the trains. Train systems pay off over decades, which is far too long for private investment, but not a problem for public investment. Countries become rich over centuries of infrastructure buildup.
Show me nuclear, wind, hamsters,. etc. that will power a car down the road...
You may have missed the stories of electric cars.... the whole point of which is to consume nuclear, wind,... energy. Similarly the move to trains all across Europe - specifically Electrc trains.
The current ConDem government is making dramatic cuts in these deprived areas. In the areas around London where the riots occured, youth unemployment pushes 20-30%, practical illiteracy near 40%. The ComDem government has been introducing 'austerity' measures, removing grants to support schools making attending high school equivalent infeasible for many poorer, closing down the youth clubs, etc. Local groups have been pointing out that the neighbourhoods have been near riot for months now.
On top of this, they're making large cuts in the police. So when the riots came, the police retreated to just protecting the stations: they didn't have the resources to deal "properly" with riots. The vast majority of arrests have been for looting, etc. : opportunistic crimes , evidence from CCTV and those picked up by cops as the riot cools down, not during the riots themselves. Given the amount of property that burned, the tiny numbers arrested for arson, etc. are remarkable.
So the cops (and government) are relying on fairly brutal policing (when they find you) and hard sentences to deter people from rioting, rather than fixing the problems on the ground (either socially or with proper policing).
From local reports (see guardian.co.uk reportage on the peaceful protests before the riots) the police took the attitude of retreating from the streets and protecting only the police stations.
Not so surprising, then, that they avoided attacking police stations. Especially since the protest was about police going OTT.
They basically need a distributed network, so that they can't be blocked by DNS, etc. : with proven good security, and the ability to not need real names. So why not fix the bugs, missing features in Diaspora, etc. instead?
Absolutely the last thing you need is your own high-profile network. Thats just flagging activities you don't want to be flagged. You want instead a distributed network where dissidents, etc. can just use it without being spotted (lost in the crowd), with secure communications, and the ability to go viral with news reports, etc: basically FB or Google+ with privacy. Picking your own l33t social network such a bad idea.
Look at the German plan in more detail. They're not turning off existing reactors: they're just not doing "new build" nuclear.
Now, look at the economic cost: from a national perspective (including subsidies all round, e.g. in setting up industries, dismantling nuclear reactors, insurance...) then nuclear power is more expensive than renewables. Germany is already pretty commited to a huge renewables scheme (google Desertec), which involves more jobs for Germans, etc. and the case becomes clearer: its gaining political capital from something they were economically going to do anyway.
Where murders are undertaken by criminal organization, informants deeply entrenched in the organization are hardly in a position to hold up a hand and say, look > guys, I don't think we should to this because it would be wrong...
It goes far further than that in some cases. Consider the IRA in Ireland. The terrorists / paramilitaries were riddled with informers; estimates are that 1/4 to 1/3 of all members were killed / beaten by internal security for being thought informers. The security forces (MI6, MI5 but also police and army) were successful in turning a number of high-profile people; a lot of those who joined for idealistic reasons were sickened by the bloodshed and criminality involved and turned against the IRA.
Now consider what happens if you are such an informer, working for MI6. To progress and be more senior, and more help, means being more "active" than the others, more brutal. When choices are to be made, you advocate the violent one. The IRA was governed by the "Army council", which decided among other things, whether to "go to war" or pursue non-violent means. So, if you are successful in your informer career and have made it onto the council, which way do you vote? You are encouraged to vote pro-war by your MI6 handlers. If there is a split, you need to be on the pro-war side, and in the organisation that continues the war, or else MI6 has no informers there... So, as the peace process begins, informers start coming out of the woodwork. It turns out you were not the only such informer on the council. In fact, they were probably the majority. The fighting only continued at the behest of the intelligence services... Now, you're an embarrassment to the intelligence agencies, who don't want this to be known / widely considered. Rather than protect you, they'd rather you just disappeared...
Slashdot Mirror
The term "law" is outdated terminology in science: it typically meant an empirically determined rule, with or without explanation.
So it is / was a set of observations, rather than an explanation. Its too easily confused with theory and the term is avoided today.
The era of Laws in science, mostly the 18th and 19th centuries, was when many "Laws" were discovered, but the underlying theories were not known. They were a useful stepping stone to codifying our knowledge, but should not be confused with theory.
Possibly the Slashdot demographic isn't the run-out-and-buy-the-latest-top-40-hit crowd. I probably bought one single for every 10-20 LPs I bought.
Is there still a Top40? I mean, that people can name musicians on, rather than a manipulated sales list up on a website somewhere?
Once upon a time, "Top of the Pops", giving the top40, was one of the biggest programs on BBC TV. Ok, it lost its market to MTV,
but really it died when the labels dropped their midlists in the late 1990s -early 2000s. They dropped over 80% of their _profitable_ artists, concentrating on the few big earners. Now, there aren't enough new songs out there to stage a Top40 show every week, least one that people want to watch (rather than fill the hours on MTV).
If RIAA gave me vouchers for 4 new albums from 2011 or 2012 for free, I couldn't name any music I would want.
So, I go to gigs and buy CDs there if the band is any good. RIAA should be ashamed of themselves for how bad a job they are doing at promoting and selling music. Their top-5 only model collapsed on them, and they should stop blaming piracy.
Now, I may not like X-factor, etc. but there would have been _something_ out there. I used to cringe at some of the "oldie" material that made the Top40 in Ireland etc when I was growing up, but it was bought by people. The equivalent music isn't there for someone who doesn't want the top 3 songs that make RIAA the most profit.
We actually run weather and climate models for Mars, now. Currently we've run models on Mars, Titan and Venus, based on Earth weather models. Its a good check on whether the models are right: physics is physics, and bar changing some specific details (water -> methane, CO2 condenses out on Mars, etc) if the model doesn't work on Mars, somethings wrong with the model.
Power generator to drive chain, an electric car converts 69% of the energy to motion.
Hydrogen: just over 30%, the last time I looked.
When you're running short of (easy) energy, electric wins hands down. Secondly, there is a lot of competition out there on electricity-generating methods: coal, oil, wind, nuclear, solar ... just about everybody is getting into the Electricity business.
Hydrogen, OTOH, has the advantage that it looks like oil, if you're in the oil business: swap petrol for hydrogen gas, you still have gas stations, you still have thousands of miles of pipes to install. If you're Exxon, you'll like hydrogen, but Electricity is a different kettle of fish: other utilities already have that transmission bit sewn up.
Reusing internal combustion technology is irrelevant in this bigger picture.
For the most part, people have been moving to mass transit and more cycling (better cycle lanes), rather than renewable fuels. Also, people are moving more into cities, and investments are being made to make them more livable.
All the mass transit / cycle lanes, etc investments are paid for by ... fuel taxes.
In the event of a sudden crunch (eg. oh, a war in the middle East) and oil rises dramatically, it becomes possible for (more) people to switch from cars to buses. Also, the government can temporarily drop the fuel tax to stabilise matters for its citizens; and/or subsidize the poor (e.g. for home heating oil). These actions aren't available otherwise.
Dramatic moves to renewable fuels weren't expected this side of the Atlantic (by anyone sane). Do the numbers: there's no way of growing that much biofuels without substituting for food. Its really only pushed as an answer in the US where solutions of moving away from automobiles is not seen as politically possible.
Yeah, I got the joke; it was mildly funny.
I was just pointing out 'bylaws' are kind of the opposite of 'byelaws': they're local laws that, barring exceptions, cannot be prosecuted criminally.
Caution: IANAL, I know some Irish law which is derived from British law but British law may have changed, but exceptions are possible only when the DPP says so. In particular the DPP gives a blanket permission for certain crimes to be prosecuted "in its name", e.g. speeding. So a local council can set the speed limit on a road to 30mph (by byelaws, which don't need to go through Parliament), and prosecute them criminally in the name of the DPP, but if they make spitting on main st. illegal, they can impose a fine (non-criminal) but no further.
So normally, the Aldrych 4 could expect to be (1) told to leave (for trespassing). No proceedings if they just agreed and left, or worse (2) fined, no criminal record. That an arbitrarily hard punishment is enforced on them is immoral.
Bylaws are local council ( or in this case transport authority) laws.
Fines can be levied, etc. but they cannot be criminally prosecuted : the local authority can bring you to court, but not criminal court; for that a case has to be prepared by the police for the Director of Public Prosecutions (an independent prosecutor).
Within that timeframe, everyone will already have one; a smart phone.
Think of the "smart TV" as having a web api: you see a second screen icon on your 'phone, drag a video onto it, the TV (in reality a computer) starts displaying that: pulling content directly not necessarily "X forwarded"
(it would be insane wasting wireless bandwidth in the house supplying a heavy bandwidth SuperHD device that-sits-in-one-place. Control it by wifi, but its main content over a wire.
If nobody _else_ knows better, no reason to trust it to a 20-year old who doesn't know better.
If somebody else does, then why are you neglecting their experience?
If you had a choice, you'd build a team with a mix of youth and experience.
The report specified that a *particular* *technology* will not scale in the future, not that no technology will be found.
Kids these days.
Its "Film at 11".
Back in the day when film was this stuff that needed processing, they would take a film camera, film the event, bring it back and show it. But it wouldn't make the 6 O'clock news; it would typically be ready by 11pm. Hence "film at 11".
Sheesh. Its called Irony.
By ""fundamental human right" it means that nobody should be allowed deny you this.
For example the debate over whether Internet access should be a right. Nobody is suggesting that I should get Internet for free,
or that the government should pay my broadband bill, but rather that it should be unconstitutional for there to be a law
denying me access to the internet (e.g. the HADOPI law in France, three strikes laws, etc.), because today its effectively
necessary to participate in democracy: (e.g. this discussion is not happening in a Town Hall. Its happening on the 'net.
Its where people talk and become educated as to whats going on, and formulate their opinions, etc).
Similarly, many other public services are becoming primarily provided over the net only. To be net-deprived is becoming a major
handicap in western society.
Another example would be food: I have a right to food, that would mean denying me that right is a major infringement, ...
but doesn't necessarily mean you have to feed me
The GSM standards as originally developed were deliberately chosen to work on bands (900 MHz , IIRC) that in the US were assigned to the military. That is, to be initially incompatible and unusable in the US, so as to split the world into "US" and "rest", and give non-US developers a head start. It worked ...
This is part of the paradox of a two-party political system designed towards gridlock / consensus.
The Democrats will always get the support of the Republicans going to war, but not vice versa.
The Republicans will get the support of the democrats in ending wars.
So, its Democrats who are in power when wars start, Republicans when they end ... (mostly)
I have yet to see anyone propose a standard that actually doesn't use more electricity(which comes from coal) to create a cleaner future.
Everywhere else, people are moving towards electricity for a cleaner future.
There are plenty of ways of generating clean electricity: nuclear, wind, tidal, biomass, hydro, solar ... even, if they get the budgets right,
"clean" coal with carbon capture (from what i've seen, I think the tech. works, but not the finances).
Secondly, even with mainline coal-powered generation, greater generation efficiency can mean that coal-powered electrical vehicles
create less co2/km than gasoline.
How about: does it suffer?
Does creating a "human" inside a device where it can presumably sense, but have no limbs or autonomy consitute torture? Can you turn it off?
Why is "being natural" a defining answer to these questions?
Expand the petroleum infrastructure: In the US (and Europe) car ownership per capita peaked in 2004. Absolute car numbers have been in decline since 2008 in the US. Not only can you move away from the car, its already happening.
Plan for it. Zone so that town and city centers are dense enough to undo the need for most car journeys. This has been happening in (parts of ) Europe for decades now.
Do public investment for the trains. Train systems pay off over decades, which is far too long for private investment, but not a problem for public investment. Countries become rich over centuries of infrastructure buildup.
Show me nuclear, wind, hamsters,. etc. that will power a car down the road...
You may have missed the stories of electric cars .... the whole point of which is to consume nuclear, wind, ... energy.
Similarly the move to trains all across Europe - specifically Electrc trains.
The current ConDem government is making dramatic cuts in these deprived areas. In the areas around London where the riots occured, youth unemployment pushes 20-30%, practical illiteracy near 40%. The ComDem government has been introducing 'austerity' measures, removing grants to support schools making attending high school equivalent infeasible for many poorer, closing down the youth clubs, etc.
Local groups have been pointing out that the neighbourhoods have been near riot for months now.
On top of this, they're making large cuts in the police. So when the riots came, the police retreated to just protecting the stations: they didn't have the resources to deal "properly" with riots. The vast majority of arrests have been for looting, etc. : opportunistic crimes , evidence from CCTV and those picked up by cops as the riot cools down, not during the riots themselves. Given the amount of property that burned, the tiny numbers arrested for arson, etc. are remarkable.
So the cops (and government) are relying on fairly brutal policing (when they find you) and hard sentences to deter people from rioting, rather than fixing the problems on the ground (either socially or with proper policing).
From local reports (see guardian.co.uk reportage on the peaceful protests before the riots) the police took the attitude of retreating from the streets and protecting only the police stations.
Not so surprising, then, that they avoided attacking police stations.
Especially since the protest was about police going OTT.
Agreed.
They basically need a distributed network, so that they can't be blocked by DNS, etc. : with proven good security, and the ability to not need real names.
So why not fix the bugs, missing features in Diaspora, etc. instead?
Absolutely the last thing you need is your own high-profile network. Thats just flagging activities you don't want to be flagged.
You want instead a distributed network where dissidents, etc. can just use it without being spotted (lost in the crowd), with
secure communications, and the ability to go viral with news reports, etc: basically FB or Google+ with privacy.
Picking your own l33t social network such a bad idea.
Look at the German plan in more detail. They're not turning off existing reactors: they're just not doing "new build" nuclear.
Now, look at the economic cost: from a national perspective (including subsidies all round, e.g. in setting up industries, dismantling nuclear reactors, insurance ...)
then nuclear power is more expensive than renewables. Germany is already pretty commited to a huge renewables scheme (google Desertec), which involves more jobs for Germans, etc. and the case becomes clearer: its gaining political capital from something they were economically going to do anyway.
Where murders are undertaken by criminal organization, informants deeply entrenched in the organization are hardly in a position to hold up a hand and say, look > guys, I don't think we should to this because it would be wrong...
It goes far further than that in some cases. Consider the IRA in Ireland. The terrorists / paramilitaries were riddled with informers; estimates are that 1/4 to 1/3 of all members were killed / beaten by internal security for being thought informers. The security forces (MI6, MI5 but also police and army) were successful in turning a number of high-profile people; a lot of those who joined for idealistic reasons were sickened by the bloodshed and criminality involved and turned against the IRA.
Now consider what happens if you are such an informer, working for MI6. To progress and be more senior, and more help, means being more "active" than the others, more brutal. When choices are to be made, you advocate the violent one. The IRA was governed by the "Army council", which decided among other things, whether to "go to war" or pursue non-violent means. So, if you are successful in your informer career and have made it onto the council, which way do you vote? ... ... ...
You are encouraged to vote pro-war by your MI6 handlers. If there is a split, you need to be on the pro-war side, and in the organisation that continues the war, or else MI6 has no informers there
So, as the peace process begins, informers start coming out of the woodwork. It turns out you were not the only such informer on the council. In fact, they were probably the majority. The fighting only continued at the behest of the intelligence services
Now, you're an embarrassment to the intelligence agencies, who don't want this to be known / widely considered. Rather than protect you, they'd rather you just disappeared