Dunno about the rest of the seasons, but the earth's tilt and elliptical orbit around the sun causes winter. We're not in a perfect, circular orbit. I guess sometime in this planet's past, something hit us (drawn towards the sun from somewhere) and screwed up our orbit. Hence we have an orbit where, for a few months, we're further from the sun and months where we're closer.
The axial tilt makes the biggest difference. Eliptical orbits are the norm anyway. The Earth actually reaches perihelion (its closest approach to the sun) when it is winter in the Northern hemisphere. Even though you might expect this go give the Southern hemisphere a hotter summer the coldest place on the planet is Antartica.
That is simply not true. It is constantly changing. Do you think those earlier larger quakes had no effect on the speed of the planent's rotation? Or that the Moon doesn't alter it?
The effect of gravity of the Earth's rotation is fairly constant and predictable. An effect which, like earthquakes, is neither is the solar wind interacting with the magnetosphere. To some extent it follows the sunspot cycle, but there is randomness as to if particles from a solar erruption will be heading in the direction of Earth and how much shielding will be provided by the Moon.
"In response to floods that caused extensive damage and loss of life in the Philippines during December, 2004, Johnson & Johnson made a donation of two disaster relief modules and over 2,000 hygiene kits to partner organizations in that country. In addition, a donation was made by Johnson & Johnson to support the efforts of local disaster relief groups"
This is effectivly a company saying "we are so good because we donated X". It dosn't tell you much about how much use their donations were to paramedics and doctors in the affected areas. It dosn't even make it clear if what was sent was specifically requested or what people thousands of miles away thought might be useful.
I don't see the point of criticising the Bill Gates donations. The Gates foundation has donated almost $4B to global health programs to date.
The amount of money is often rather less important than the how and to whom... It is perfectly possible to give money in ways which have marginal, even negative results. Thus a better metric would be how many people have had their health improved by the Gates Foundation?
Yes, private aid is greater - apparently the US citizens are nicer than the US government - but read further into that same article. The problem with private donations is special interests.
"Private donations, especially large philanthropic donations and business givings, can be subject to political/ideological or economic end-goals and/or subject to special interest. A vivid example of this is in health issues around the world. Amazingly large donations by foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are impressive, but the underlying causes of the problems are not addressed, which require political solutions."
Thus it is perfectly possible to waste huge amounts of money. Whilst appearing to be a good doner, in addition to getting a tax write off. A cynical position would be that the last thing these people would want to do would be to fund anything which would in any way be a "solution". Another example is pharmacutical companies dumping drugs as "aid". Not only can they reclaim tax they also don't have to pay storage/disposal of useless drugs.
That's one of the larger problems with private donations; they're not necessarily charitable.
Much the same can apply to donations made by governments. Simply listing amounts is meaningless without some criteria of which donations make things better, which change little and which actually make things worst. Some "aid" is actually worst that useless especially that which is used to buy weapons.
USA contributes 0.1% of income to foreign aid. That's one quarter of what France donates! How does it feel to be stingier than France.
Even more important is who this "aid" goes to. The worst form of aid appears to be that given by governments to other governments, especially that which goes to rich and/or corrupt governments. IIRC the US has recently cut the amount of money given to NGOs. But not that going to questionable governments.
Not trying to just flamebait here, but have you ever used Windows Server 2003 remotely? If you can tell me that Shell is easier than RDP, then I'll be amazed.
I'd be amazed if many systems perfectly capable of supporting SSH are even capable of RDP.
Yes I can.:P Most of the world uses Microsoft software, and therefore most calamitous attacks are directed at it. The same will occur if/when Linux rises to sizeable popularity, but that's a debate for another day.
Thing is that the "Windows is more popular..." dosn't apply to things like webservers. Yet IIS has more problems than Apache. Even when Windows software is in the minority it gets attacked most! If someone were intending to do serious damage they'd target the root nameservers or Internet routers. Yet this dosn't appear to happen.
Unless there has been a change since I had a minor involvement with it, European and international patent law requires that a patent be at least applied for before an invention is put into commercial service. Apparently putting an unpatented invention into commercial service is roughly the equivalent of publishing it.
Which should render that invention unpatentable. Ditto for a court judgment mandating publication, even if the whatever was technically patentable before (including where there was a patent application in progress). The only question would be if a court judgement trumps an existing patent. However Microsoft would need to specifically enumerate which patents they though were relevent in appealing parts of the judgment (probably to a higher court), which would effectivly publish what they wish to keep secret.
In theory, the interests of society ALWAYS weigh heavier than the copyright/patent interests of a company. Patents and copyrights only exist (in theory and law, if not in practice) because (and to the extent that) they benefit society.
This is explicitally described in places such as the US. Even though this may not be explicit with in the EU the assumption behind any law is that it must be to the benefit of the society it applies to.
The law allows patents and copyright in order to increase the number of inventions and works of creative writing.
Actually it's to increase the number of these which are in some way "published". Inventions/stories/etc which only exist in someone's head are of little use. The idea of both patents and copyrights is to provide an incentive for people not to keep their ideas to themselves.
If it can be shown ineffective at reaching that goal - or even worse, counter-productive -
Or even simply redundent, either generally or in specific area's of human creativity.
then patents and/or copyright should be abolished.
Either generally or in specific cases. An alternative to abolition is to change these so as to work better. e.g. attempting to determine what is an optimal copyright term.
It's a somewhat separate issue if courts have (or should have) the power to void or transfer ownership of copyrights and patents. Interestingly Microsoft is claiming that patents it does not even have (possibly have not even filed for) yet as a reason for failing to comply with a court judgment. Dosn't this mean that Microsoft is in "contempt of court"? Even that any patent office which continues to process the affected patent applications is also in contempt of court.
The weight savings from not needing Space Shuttle-type heat tiles
An ever bigger problem with the shuttle tiles is that they are so fragile that the supposedly reusable heat shield (indeed the whole vehicle) needs to be effectivly rebuilt after every flight. Thus the whole thing ends up costing far more than a vehicle intended to be replaced after every flight. Airlines would go bankrupt if Boeing and Airbus turned out planes which required a "heavy maintanance visit" every flight. The only way in which spaceflight can become affordable is spacecaraft can be turned around on a timescale of at worst a couple of days. Preferably only as long as it takes to plug some hoses in and swap over people/cargo.
I'll hazard a guess; if the lava on the Big Island of Hawai'i was looked at from a great height then it too would look smooth.
The reason for this being the largest island is that it is also the youngest. With new land being added by vulcanism faster than the sea errodes it away. Given time what is now called Loihi will become the largest island.
The difference is between basic (Hawai'ia) and acidic (Etna) lava, or perhaps the ammount of water (of course, these two may be highly correlated).
There is also a difference between Kilauea errupting continuiously and the likes of Etna, St Helens which spend most of their time "dormant" periodically errupting explosivly. It's even been suggested that there are different types of vulcanism at work. There is no evidence of the Hawaiian islands being subject to any caldera forming erruptions, as happened to Thera and Krakatoa.
Into a thin atmosphere, which allows dissolved gasses to leave more rapidly, the erruption would tend to be quite gentle and lower (Martian) gravity means it can spread over larger areas than on Earth.
You'd also need very runny lava to allow any gasses to escape quickly. With a viscous lava a lower preasure would tend to make things even more violent.
If it's as recent as 4 million years that would put to bed the dead Mars theory. The idea that Mars lacks a molten core. If there was magma that recently there would still be a molten core.
All that recent vulcanism demonstrates that there is magma with in the crust or upper mantle. It does not tell you what might be going on elsewhere on the planet.
It would take hundreds of millions if not billions of years to go from volcanic to a cold core.
It would be perfectly possible for a volcanically planet to have a cold core, with "hot spots" near the surface.
There would almost have to be liquid underground water.
Hot rock can just as easily convert water into steam. Or very hot water kept liquid due to being under preassure.
Good news for life and also water for explorers.
If you have water under preasure at a temperature higher 90 celsius it will not make a good source drinking water.
Unless there's a very specific piece of software you need that you know won't work in SP2 there's no reason to avoid it.
Turns out that this list isn't that small and includes a fair number of "business critical" pieces of software. Then there is the issue of turning the Windows firewall on by default. Which might be ok for Joe Single-User, but can cause all sorts of problems in business.
Because it might undermine their precious GPL too.
The GPL is not an EULA. It is a document which says under what conditions you may distribute someone else's copyright works. Comparing the GPL with an EULA is like comparing apples and rocks. Anything which threatened the GPL would also threaten broadcasters, book publishers, all of the RIAA & MPAA members, etc. i.e. any business which relyed third party distribution of copyright materials with the written agreement of the copyright holder.
Copyright deals with the production and distribution of literary and other works of art. Nothing more, nothing less.
Or at least it did until various interests lobbied for it to be extended to cover other things.
An End User License covers whatever in the hell the licenseor wants. It covers usage, etc.
Or at least whatever they want which is in accordance with the "law of the land". But you may well need a lawyer to work out how things apply.
With pure Copyright, the rules for use are anything that doesn't infringe- including copying snippets and even copying your friend's instance of the work for your own purpose if it's music (American Home Recording Act covers the compulsory license to be able to do so...).
With pure copyright "per seat" systems would be tricky to support. Especially when the software was only used by one (corporate) "person".
Sample EULA: Theres a few paragraphs about not decompiling it, reselling it, etc. A few paragraphs about export restrictions.
The interesting thing is that "reverse engineering" is typically covered by statute law, which trumps any EULA. Export restrictions are typically decided by governments, not private companies. One of the problems with EULAs is that they typically contain this kind of redundent material.
Most of them contain a clause that says there is no guarantee that the software works or does what the user wants or even does what the software is designed to do. It's sold "As-Is". They take no liability if the software does damage to your computer or your data. You cannot sign your basic rights away or block enforcement of consumer protection laws by agreeing to the EULA.
The idea, from the software producer's POV, is to put as many possible clauses as possible in. On the assumption that the end user won't know which are actually applicable. It would probably take a specialist lawyer to know which clauses are voided by statute or case law. Let alone which clauses are unlikely to stand up in court.
When Saddam spends his money on wars, rather than infrastructure improvements, that's foolish. But when Bush spends the country's treasury on war with Iraq, a few months after an "impossible" blackout shuts down the East Coast, that's the right thing to do.
As well as "rolling blackouts" on the other side of the country.
The war, the First Persian Gulf war, the years of sanctions, pushed Iraq into a nasty decline, but there was still plenty of electricity and oil.
Probably an excess of oil and petroleum products, since the sanctions made it difficult to sell. The sanctions also made it difficult to repair anything damaged in GW1, due to the restrictions on importing spare parts.
Not to mention that the taxpayer money we are paying US contractors to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure is going toward rebuilding infrastructure that was destroyed by the US military, using taxpayer money.
Remembering that quite a lot of that money appears to be going as backhanders to corrupt contractors too. IIRC there was a case of the bid for rebuilding one bridge which an Iraqi engineer estimated would more than cover rebuilding every bridge in the country.
But while they're useless against an enemy, they're excellent for transferring taxpayer money into desired pockets.
Whilst ensuring that there is less money to pay for things which might actually be of use to the taxpayers who contributed the money in the first place.
Guess why monkeyman and his merry band of chimps like them?
As well as drawing attention away from matters like US foreign policy creating enemies in the first place. Sometimes with no obvious benefit for anyone...
What's the cost of a missile compared to the cost of bringing a warhead to Las Vegas on a truck?
Especially considering that it has been historically more difficult to build a working long range rocket than a working fission bomb.
This isn't science. Real scientists have said again and again that the whole missile defense system doesn't work and won't work for the forseeable future, and even if it did work it'd be trivial to defeat and confuse with new missiles.
e.g. SLBMs, low flying cruise missiles or trucks...
Slashdot Mirror
Dunno about the rest of the seasons, but the earth's tilt and elliptical orbit around the sun causes winter. We're not in a perfect, circular orbit. I guess sometime in this planet's past, something hit us (drawn towards the sun from somewhere) and screwed up our orbit. Hence we have an orbit where, for a few months, we're further from the sun and months where we're closer.
The axial tilt makes the biggest difference. Eliptical orbits are the norm anyway. The Earth actually reaches perihelion (its closest approach to the sun) when it is winter in the Northern hemisphere. Even though you might expect this go give the Southern hemisphere a hotter summer the coldest place on the planet is Antartica.
So if one were to construct MANY tall skyscrapers over a large area, say New York, would the Earth's rotation slow down?
New York isn't that large an area also they probably don't mass that much in comparison with the Island of Manhatten.
Can one then assume that human activity over the past few hundred years has had an impact on Earth's rotation, even if by a very little amount?
More likely activities such as open cast mining and land reclaimation that construction of buildings.
Yeah, the more I think about this, I don't buy it. Isn't the mass of earth still the same?
For rotation the relevent factor is "moment of inertia" which depends on the distribution of mass (with respect to the axis of rotation.)
That is simply not true. It is constantly changing. Do you think those earlier larger quakes had no effect on the speed of the planent's rotation? Or that the Moon doesn't alter it?
The effect of gravity of the Earth's rotation is fairly constant and predictable. An effect which, like earthquakes, is neither is the solar wind interacting with the magnetosphere. To some extent it follows the sunspot cycle, but there is randomness as to if particles from a solar erruption will be heading in the direction of Earth and how much shielding will be provided by the Moon.
"In response to floods that caused extensive damage and loss of life in the Philippines during December, 2004, Johnson & Johnson made a donation of two disaster relief modules and over 2,000 hygiene kits to partner organizations in that country. In addition, a donation was made by Johnson & Johnson to support the efforts of local disaster relief groups"
This is effectivly a company saying "we are so good because we donated X". It dosn't tell you much about how much use their donations were to paramedics and doctors in the affected areas. It dosn't even make it clear if what was sent was specifically requested or what people thousands of miles away thought might be useful.
I don't see the point of criticising the Bill Gates donations. The Gates foundation has donated almost $4B to global health programs to date.
The amount of money is often rather less important than the how and to whom...
It is perfectly possible to give money in ways which have marginal, even negative results. Thus a better metric would be how many people have had their health improved by the Gates Foundation?
Yes, private aid is greater - apparently the US citizens are nicer than the US government - but read further into that same article. The problem with private donations is special interests.
"Private donations, especially large philanthropic donations and business givings, can be subject to political/ideological or economic end-goals and/or subject to special interest. A vivid example of this is in health issues around the world. Amazingly large donations by foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are impressive, but the underlying causes of the problems are not addressed, which require political solutions."
Thus it is perfectly possible to waste huge amounts of money. Whilst appearing to be a good doner, in addition to getting a tax write off. A cynical position would be that the last thing these people would want to do would be to fund anything which would in any way be a "solution".
Another example is pharmacutical companies dumping drugs as "aid". Not only can they reclaim tax they also don't have to pay storage/disposal of useless drugs.
That's one of the larger problems with private donations; they're not necessarily charitable.
Much the same can apply to donations made by governments.
Simply listing amounts is meaningless without some criteria of which donations make things better, which change little and which actually make things worst. Some "aid" is actually worst that useless especially that which is used to buy weapons.
USA contributes 0.1% of income to foreign aid. That's one quarter of what France donates! How does it feel to be stingier than France.
Even more important is who this "aid" goes to. The worst form of aid appears to be that given by governments to other governments, especially that which goes to rich and/or corrupt governments.
IIRC the US has recently cut the amount of money given to NGOs. But not that going to questionable governments.
Not trying to just flamebait here, but have you ever used Windows Server 2003 remotely? If you can tell me that Shell is easier than RDP, then I'll be amazed.
I'd be amazed if many systems perfectly capable of supporting SSH are even capable of RDP.
Yes I can. :P Most of the world uses Microsoft software, and therefore most calamitous attacks are directed at it. The same will occur if/when Linux rises to sizeable popularity, but that's a debate for another day.
Thing is that the "Windows is more popular..." dosn't apply to things like webservers. Yet IIS has more problems than Apache. Even when Windows software is in the minority it gets attacked most!
If someone were intending to do serious damage they'd target the root nameservers or Internet routers. Yet this dosn't appear to happen.
Unless there has been a change since I had a minor involvement with it, European and international patent law requires that a patent be at least applied for before an invention is put into commercial service. Apparently putting an unpatented invention into commercial service is roughly the equivalent of publishing it.
Which should render that invention unpatentable. Ditto for a court judgment mandating publication, even if the whatever was technically patentable before (including where there was a patent application in progress).
The only question would be if a court judgement trumps an existing patent. However Microsoft would need to specifically enumerate which patents they though were relevent in appealing parts of the judgment (probably to a higher court), which would effectivly publish what they wish to keep secret.
In theory, the interests of society ALWAYS weigh heavier than the copyright/patent interests of a company. Patents and copyrights only exist (in theory and law, if not in practice) because (and to the extent that) they benefit society.
This is explicitally described in places such as the US. Even though this may not be explicit with in the EU the assumption behind any law is that it must be to the benefit of the society it applies to.
The law allows patents and copyright in order to increase the number of inventions and works of creative writing.
Actually it's to increase the number of these which are in some way "published". Inventions/stories/etc which only exist in someone's head are of little use. The idea of both patents and copyrights is to provide an incentive for people not to keep their ideas to themselves.
If it can be shown ineffective at reaching that goal - or even worse, counter-productive -
Or even simply redundent, either generally or in specific area's of human creativity.
then patents and/or copyright should be abolished.
Either generally or in specific cases. An alternative to abolition is to change these so as to work better. e.g. attempting to determine what is an optimal copyright term.
It's a somewhat separate issue if courts have (or should have) the power to void or transfer ownership of copyrights and patents. Interestingly Microsoft is claiming that patents it does not even have (possibly have not even filed for) yet as a reason for failing to comply with a court judgment. Dosn't this mean that Microsoft is in "contempt of court"? Even that any patent office which continues to process the affected patent applications is also in contempt of court.
The weight savings from not needing Space Shuttle-type heat tiles
An ever bigger problem with the shuttle tiles is that they are so fragile that the supposedly reusable heat shield (indeed the whole vehicle) needs to be effectivly rebuilt after every flight.
Thus the whole thing ends up costing far more than a vehicle intended to be replaced after every flight.
Airlines would go bankrupt if Boeing and Airbus turned out planes which required a "heavy maintanance visit" every flight. The only way in which spaceflight can become affordable is spacecaraft can be turned around on a timescale of at worst a couple of days. Preferably only as long as it takes to plug some hoses in and swap over people/cargo.
I'll hazard a guess; if the lava on the Big Island of Hawai'i was looked at from a great height then it too would look smooth.
The reason for this being the largest island is that it is also the youngest. With new land being added by vulcanism faster than the sea errodes it away. Given time what is now called Loihi will become the largest island.
The difference is between basic (Hawai'ia) and acidic (Etna) lava, or perhaps the ammount of water (of course, these two may be highly correlated).
There is also a difference between Kilauea errupting continuiously and the likes of Etna, St Helens which spend most of their time "dormant" periodically errupting explosivly.
It's even been suggested that there are different types of vulcanism at work. There is no evidence of the Hawaiian islands being subject to any caldera forming erruptions, as happened to Thera and Krakatoa.
Into a thin atmosphere, which allows dissolved gasses to leave more rapidly, the erruption would tend to be quite gentle and lower (Martian) gravity means it can spread over larger areas than on Earth.
You'd also need very runny lava to allow any gasses to escape quickly. With a viscous lava a lower preasure would tend to make things even more violent.
If it's as recent as 4 million years that would put to bed the dead Mars theory. The idea that Mars lacks a molten core. If there was magma that recently there would still be a molten core.
All that recent vulcanism demonstrates that there is magma with in the crust or upper mantle. It does not tell you what might be going on elsewhere on the planet.
It would take hundreds of millions if not billions of years to go from volcanic to a cold core.
It would be perfectly possible for a volcanically planet to have a cold core, with "hot spots" near the surface.
There would almost have to be liquid underground water.
Hot rock can just as easily convert water into steam. Or very hot water kept liquid due to being under preassure.
Good news for life and also water for explorers.
If you have water under preasure at a temperature higher 90 celsius it will not make a good source drinking water.
Unless there's a very specific piece of software you need that you know won't work in SP2 there's no reason to avoid it.
Turns out that this list isn't that small and includes a fair number of "business critical" pieces of software.
Then there is the issue of turning the Windows firewall on by default. Which might be ok for Joe Single-User, but can cause all sorts of problems in business.
Because it might undermine their precious GPL too.
The GPL is not an EULA. It is a document which says under what conditions you may distribute someone else's copyright works. Comparing the GPL with an EULA is like comparing apples and rocks.
Anything which threatened the GPL would also threaten broadcasters, book publishers, all of the RIAA & MPAA members, etc. i.e. any business which relyed third party distribution of copyright materials with the written agreement of the copyright holder.
Copyright deals with the production and distribution of literary and other works of art. Nothing more, nothing less.
Or at least it did until various interests lobbied for it to be extended to cover other things.
An End User License covers whatever in the hell the licenseor wants. It covers usage, etc.
Or at least whatever they want which is in accordance with the "law of the land". But you may well need a lawyer to work out how things apply.
With pure Copyright, the rules for use are anything that doesn't infringe- including copying snippets and even copying your friend's instance of the work for your own purpose if it's music (American Home Recording Act covers the compulsory license to be able to do so...).
With pure copyright "per seat" systems would be tricky to support. Especially when the software was only used by one (corporate) "person".
Sample EULA: Theres a few paragraphs about not decompiling it, reselling it, etc. A few paragraphs about export restrictions.
The interesting thing is that "reverse engineering" is typically covered by statute law, which trumps any EULA. Export restrictions are typically decided by governments, not private companies.
One of the problems with EULAs is that they typically contain this kind of redundent material.
Most of them contain a clause that says there is no guarantee that the software works or does what the user wants or even does what the software is designed to do. It's sold "As-Is". They take no liability if the software does damage to your computer or your data. You cannot sign your basic rights away or block enforcement of consumer protection laws by agreeing to the EULA.
The idea, from the software producer's POV, is to put as many possible clauses as possible in. On the assumption that the end user won't know which are actually applicable. It would probably take a specialist lawyer to know which clauses are voided by statute or case law. Let alone which clauses are unlikely to stand up in court.
When Saddam spends his money on wars, rather than infrastructure improvements, that's foolish. But when Bush spends the country's treasury on war with Iraq, a few months after an "impossible" blackout shuts down the East Coast, that's the right thing to do.
As well as "rolling blackouts" on the other side of the country.
The war, the First Persian Gulf war, the years of sanctions, pushed Iraq into a nasty decline, but there was still plenty of electricity and oil.
Probably an excess of oil and petroleum products, since the sanctions made it difficult to sell. The sanctions also made it difficult to repair anything damaged in GW1, due to the restrictions on importing spare parts.
Not to mention that the taxpayer money we are paying US contractors to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure is going toward rebuilding infrastructure that was destroyed by the US military, using taxpayer money.
Remembering that quite a lot of that money appears to be going as backhanders to corrupt contractors too.
IIRC there was a case of the bid for rebuilding one bridge which an Iraqi engineer estimated would more than cover rebuilding every bridge in the country.
But while they're useless against an enemy, they're excellent for transferring taxpayer money into desired pockets.
Whilst ensuring that there is less money to pay for things which might actually be of use to the taxpayers who contributed the money in the first place.
Guess why monkeyman and his merry band of chimps like them?
As well as drawing attention away from matters like US foreign policy creating enemies in the first place. Sometimes with no obvious benefit for anyone...
What's the cost of a missile compared to the cost of bringing a warhead to Las Vegas on a truck?
Especially considering that it has been historically more difficult to build a working long range rocket than a working fission bomb.
This isn't science. Real scientists have said again and again that the whole missile defense system doesn't work and won't work for the forseeable future, and even if it did work it'd be trivial to defeat and confuse with new missiles.
e.g. SLBMs, low flying cruise missiles or trucks...