While the Wikipedia site is *likely* to be true. Likely to have been written by an expert and an authority on the subject. There is absolutely no guarantee of it's verity or authority.
It very much depends on the subject in question. In some cases you can be sure that the writings of "experts" and "authorities" are very likely to be untrue.
If anything, it sounds like our estimates of the Earth's age may be too young, not too old.
Not just the Earth, but anything where radioactive decay is used as the basis for working out age. Things get even more troublesome if this effect is not uniform across radio isotopes.
Im guessing the fact that the US (and the UK) had kept a brutal dictator in power in Iran for several decades prior to that,
As well as having put him in power in the first place. Iran being one of several countries where the US destroyed democratic governments in the latter half of the 20th century.
plus the fact that the US were punishing Iranians for overthrowing said dictator (freezing Iranian assets in the US) had nothing to do with the hostage crisis...
There's also the issue of how many of the people held hostage were those you'd expect to find in a diplomatic mission.
That's not how it works. When someone makes a claim, they have to back it up, not the doubters.
Unless the original claim is Politically Correct. In which case those making the claim insist that any doubters "prove" them wrong. The most obvious sign of this is where skeptics are called "deniers"...
That's why we need more MASS TRANSIT--it is way safer to have 3 million people on professionally-run subways and buses than in amateur-operated vehicles. Especially when they are drunk, or tired, or distracted. Giving people useful mass transit options at all hours of the day makes it way easier to avoid driving while impaired by anything, including alcohol.
In addition to all the usual issues you'd also need crew members to operate "unsocial hours". Possibly even more people than at other times to deal with passengers who behave badly when drunk.
I'm surprised MADD is so focused on causing more problems for people and not giving people solutions.
IIRC MADD has effectivly been taken over by people who are anti alcohol. To the point where the founder wants nothing more to do with it...
Just about every sports or race cars out there ( including Formula 1) have negative camber. You are saying that is a design default? Righhhhhht.
Ever notice they change the wheels every time the car comes into the pits? Indeed the car itself only needs to function til the end of the race. It will be rebuilt for the next race.
It would require a wirelessly controlled pump attached to the tire and it would probably be integrated with the TPMS system (which is already wireless). But the pump would need to be powered somehow.
When you send an email from one of these web sites, you're supposed to email your own MP, not one picked at random.
Or the site itself could pick the MP from the address/postcode details entered.
Therefore, the emails he is talking about are from his own constituents.
Which MPs (or their staff) should be able to trivially verify against the electoral register. Another thing is that even with "form letters" 38 degrees encourages people to add additional comments.
Well if this is proof of global warming, then a snowstorm in the summer must be proof there is no global warming right? Or is climate different from weather?
Since this is the largest berg since 1962 it's hard to see how it could be proof of anything other than something cyclic.
This is something that has always annoyed me about the GW debate (or more like GW screaming match). When something bad happens, a glacier breaks off, there's a strong hurricane, or when the weather is unseasonably hot people say "See? See! Global warming! Look at the bad shit happening!" However when the opposite is true, when things are unseasonably cool, or when the weather is nice and mild (so far this year's hurricane season is shaping up to not be that intense) the screams are "Weather is not climate! You cannot look at isolated events and try to use them as proof!"
It's called "having your cake and eating it". Though no doubt there will be some claiming that the cold winter in South America (as well as the cold winter in January) is proof of "Global Warming"/"Climate Change". Also deciding if something is "climate"/"weather" or "global"/"local" typically appears to be something only a "climate scientist" or at least an AGW believer can make.
Well, which way do you want it then? You can't yer well go cherry picking the events that you think support your side and holding them up as evidence and ignoring everything else. Likewise if the individual events really aren't meaningful, then why trumpet them?
That would be true if you were dealing with a science. Such cherry picking even outright "DoubleThink" is far more typical of political and religious faiths.
There are good reasons to care what people find out about you. I remember a few years ago, Ted Haggard was head of the National Association of Evangelicals, railing against homosexuals and gay marriage. Then it broke that he was paying a male masseuse for sex and meth.
In which case the solution is to either "practice what you preach" or "preach what you practice".
Now in his case, he was still alive but imagine the same sort of thing comes to light after death instead. There's shame for his family (who presumably share his views), shame for his church, shame for the association. It destroys his credibility and undermines his church's and his organization's. Assuming he believes what he preached, it undermines his positions as well. You don't get to rail about how horrible homosexuals are, fuck your male masseuse, and claim to be some agent of God on the moral high ground.
So you think hypocrits should be protected? (Possibly he should have been a member of the Catholic Church instead.)
Here we go again with people thinking that the paper paradigm applies to the digital world.
It dosn't even apply to the "paper world" any more. Devices such as fax machines, photocopiers and cameras changed the rules long before anything like wikileaks was possible.
Even if this machine can distinguish guilt at 100% accuracy, that's useless. A fake terrorist may feel guilty about what they're doing. A cartoon antagonist is aware of his evilness, because he's from the same mind as the protagonist.
A "fake terrorist" is an actor. All this machine may be doing is working out how well actors follow "scripts".
In good fiction, the villain shouldn't know they're the villain.
Most American online games already have your name or can track the players because they pay with credit cards and use the Internet from home.
But the name on the card need not be a person's "real name". The whole issue of names is far from trivial. Especially when it comes to putting them into computer systems.
Definitely. Imagine 1700 users eager to break out of the firewall, eager to get to places they shouldn't do and to install programs that they're not allowed. At least government departments don't generally have people working in them who'd do anything to install crapware from the Net!
On top of that you have various pieces of "educational software" some of which can fairly be called "crapware". Which include the likes of trying to store things that should be per user as per machine or vice versa. Downgrading java/flash/etc on install (sometimes silently) because they can't cope with the concept of there already being a later version on the machine.
That's not including the 100 or so teachers and 100 support staff, some of whom would (and indeed did, until we blocked it) install anything they find with a "click here" button.
Some adults appear to be worst than children in this respect. Especially when some appear to believe that a laptop issued to them or simply present in the room they teach in is their personal property (except when it comes to taking good care of it.)
Does MSIE yet have an en-gb version? How about MS Windows or Office? When it comes to language localisation Open Source Software is typically much better than proprietary software. Though interestingly free proprietary can be better than paid for proprietary.
No, blame incompetent IT departments. Back when those kinds of apps were being built, the prevailing attitude in these kinds of places was that cross-browser compatibility was unnecessary for intranet applications.
Not all of these are developed in house. So the blame may lay with a contractor or supplier.
People like myself always loudly pointed out that relying on proprietary Internet Explorer 6-only code would lock them into a single vendor and cause problems if Microsoft ever moved further towards standard code.
Together with ironies like it might have been less work to write something which was mostly/entirely standard HTML in the first place and that these applications may be served from Apache (running under a non Windows OS).
I wasn't aware that you could only have one browser installed on a computer at a time. What's wrong with installing Firefox for 99% of tasks, and also having IE6 available for the obsolete and soon to be extinct tasks that require it?
In such a situation "upgrading" IE is unlikely to be the best option. Since it is difficult to install multiple versions of it, at least under Windows.
Departments in the UK government spend £millions in testing software. Sad thing is, one department will do the testing, then another has to do exactly the same wasting money in the process.
Or they'll pay some contractor to do the testing. Then there will be a complex chain of sub contracting which will at each stage take their cut.
As long as it's supported by the software publisher or distributor in the form of security patches, the difference between security of new software and old software is rather marginal.
It may well be the case that the very new is actually a worst choice. The so called "bathtub curve" can be applicable to software. Even in cases where the supplier hasn't "sold" what is to all intents and purposes a badly tested "beta".
But the real reason to not get too much behind on upgrading is user experience: switching from XP to Vista feels differently, but not a whole lot. Switching from Vista to Win7 is also noticeable with the GUI and interface, but with even less differences than before. But switching from XP to 7 is quite a jump.
Would this "jump" be any smaller going from XP to Ubuntu? Which also means getting rid of complex to administer software licence systems, EULAs, CALs, etc, etc.
Every reactor produces unique isotopes. It's an absolutely unique fingerprint. It will be present in the plutonium (unless you are suggesting that someone is going to refine plutonium to near 100%) and has been used for decades.
The only obvious difficulty is likely to be getting hold of that fingerprint in the first place.
Air monitors during the cold war would harvest particles of radioactive debris from surface testing, permitting identification of which reactor the material was from.
On it's own this would only tell you if different weapons came from the same or different reactors. You'd need other information to identify the actual reactors. There's also the complication that a single weapons could have material from multiple sources in it.
Almost nobody actually makes a pure uranium bomb. Horribly inefficient stuff. You need a lot of it to do anything, which immediately makes missiles impractical.
Any viable terrorist nuclear attack would probably use a truck or container ship though.
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While the Wikipedia site is *likely* to be true. Likely to have been written by an expert and an authority on the subject. There is absolutely no guarantee of it's verity or authority.
It very much depends on the subject in question. In some cases you can be sure that the writings of "experts" and "authorities" are very likely to be untrue.
If anything, it sounds like our estimates of the Earth's age may be too young, not too old.
Not just the Earth, but anything where radioactive decay is used as the basis for working out age. Things get even more troublesome if this effect is not uniform across radio isotopes.
Im guessing the fact that the US (and the UK) had kept a brutal dictator in power in Iran for several decades prior to that,
As well as having put him in power in the first place. Iran being one of several countries where the US destroyed democratic governments in the latter half of the 20th century.
plus the fact that the US were punishing Iranians for overthrowing said dictator (freezing Iranian assets in the US) had nothing to do with the hostage crisis...
There's also the issue of how many of the people held hostage were those you'd expect to find in a diplomatic mission.
That's not how it works. When someone makes a claim, they have to back it up, not the doubters.
Unless the original claim is Politically Correct. In which case those making the claim insist that any doubters "prove" them wrong. The most obvious sign of this is where skeptics are called "deniers"...
That's why we need more MASS TRANSIT--it is way safer to have 3 million people on professionally-run subways and buses than in amateur-operated vehicles. Especially when they are drunk, or tired, or distracted. Giving people useful mass transit options at all hours of the day makes it way easier to avoid driving while impaired by anything, including alcohol.
In addition to all the usual issues you'd also need crew members to operate "unsocial hours". Possibly even more people than at other times to deal with passengers who behave badly when drunk.
I'm surprised MADD is so focused on causing more problems for people and not giving people solutions.
IIRC MADD has effectivly been taken over by people who are anti alcohol. To the point where the founder wants nothing more to do with it...
Just about every sports or race cars out there ( including Formula 1) have negative camber. You are saying that is a design default? Righhhhhht.
Ever notice they change the wheels every time the car comes into the pits? Indeed the car itself only needs to function til the end of the race. It will be rebuilt for the next race.
It would require a wirelessly controlled pump attached to the tire and it would probably be integrated with the TPMS system (which is already wireless). But the pump would need to be powered somehow.
Most obvious way would be inductive.
When you send an email from one of these web sites, you're supposed to email your own MP, not one picked at random.
Or the site itself could pick the MP from the address/postcode details entered.
Therefore, the emails he is talking about are from his own constituents.
Which MPs (or their staff) should be able to trivially verify against the electoral register.
Another thing is that even with "form letters" 38 degrees encourages people to add additional comments.
So the time frame is only over 5 years? Cars can and do last longer than that.
How long does the battery last in such a vehicle? Replacing this can cost rather a lot.
That would be absolutely tragic if and only if one or more lawyers actually made it off the island!
Apparently sharks won't eat lawyers. Are polar bears as fussy?
Well if this is proof of global warming, then a snowstorm in the summer must be proof there is no global warming right? Or is climate different from weather?
Since this is the largest berg since 1962 it's hard to see how it could be proof of anything other than something cyclic.
This is something that has always annoyed me about the GW debate (or more like GW screaming match). When something bad happens, a glacier breaks off, there's a strong hurricane, or when the weather is unseasonably hot people say "See? See! Global warming! Look at the bad shit happening!" However when the opposite is true, when things are unseasonably cool, or when the weather is nice and mild (so far this year's hurricane season is shaping up to not be that intense) the screams are "Weather is not climate! You cannot look at isolated events and try to use them as proof!"
It's called "having your cake and eating it". Though no doubt there will be some claiming that the cold winter in South America (as well as the cold winter in January) is proof of "Global Warming"/"Climate Change". Also deciding if something is "climate"/"weather" or "global"/"local" typically appears to be something only a "climate scientist" or at least an AGW believer can make.
Well, which way do you want it then? You can't yer well go cherry picking the events that you think support your side and holding them up as evidence and ignoring everything else. Likewise if the individual events really aren't meaningful, then why trumpet them?
That would be true if you were dealing with a science. Such cherry picking even outright "DoubleThink" is far more typical of political and religious faiths.
There are good reasons to care what people find out about you. I remember a few years ago, Ted Haggard was head of the National Association of Evangelicals, railing against homosexuals and gay marriage. Then it broke that he was paying a male masseuse for sex and meth.
In which case the solution is to either "practice what you preach" or "preach what you practice".
Now in his case, he was still alive but imagine the same sort of thing comes to light after death instead. There's shame for his family (who presumably share his views), shame for his church, shame for the association. It destroys his credibility and undermines his church's and his organization's. Assuming he believes what he preached, it undermines his positions as well. You don't get to rail about how horrible homosexuals are, fuck your male masseuse, and claim to be some agent of God on the moral high ground.
So you think hypocrits should be protected? (Possibly he should have been a member of the Catholic Church instead.)
Actually, they have this thing, "cryptography" now.
How do you ensure that whoever is running the service will not have access to everything?
Here we go again with people thinking that the paper paradigm applies to the digital world.
It dosn't even apply to the "paper world" any more. Devices such as fax machines, photocopiers and cameras changed the rules long before anything like wikileaks was possible.
Even if this machine can distinguish guilt at 100% accuracy, that's useless. A fake terrorist may feel guilty about what they're doing. A cartoon antagonist is aware of his evilness, because he's from the same mind as the protagonist.
A "fake terrorist" is an actor. All this machine may be doing is working out how well actors follow "scripts".
In good fiction, the villain shouldn't know they're the villain.
Because that's the way things work in real life.
Most American online games already have your name or can track the players because they pay with credit cards and use the Internet from home.
But the name on the card need not be a person's "real name". The whole issue of names is far from trivial. Especially when it comes to putting them into computer systems.
The be all and end all reason that TI want's to prevent people from installing software on these calc's is the modern education system.
The solution is actually quite simple. Issue a standard calculator (most likely a fairly basic model) with the test paper.
Definitely. Imagine 1700 users eager to break out of the firewall, eager to get to places they shouldn't do and to install programs that they're not allowed. At least government departments don't generally have people working in them who'd do anything to install crapware from the Net!
On top of that you have various pieces of "educational software" some of which can fairly be called "crapware". Which include the likes of trying to store things that should be per user as per machine or vice versa. Downgrading java/flash/etc on install (sometimes silently) because they can't cope with the concept of there already being a later version on the machine.
That's not including the 100 or so teachers and 100 support staff, some of whom would (and indeed did, until we blocked it) install anything they find with a "click here" button.
Some adults appear to be worst than children in this respect. Especially when some appear to believe that a laptop issued to them or simply present in the room they teach in is their personal property (except when it comes to taking good care of it.)
You know Firefox has an en-gb version,
Does MSIE yet have an en-gb version? How about MS Windows or Office? When it comes to language localisation Open Source Software is typically much better than proprietary software. Though interestingly free proprietary can be better than paid for proprietary.
No, blame incompetent IT departments. Back when those kinds of apps were being built, the prevailing attitude in these kinds of places was that cross-browser compatibility was unnecessary for intranet applications.
Not all of these are developed in house. So the blame may lay with a contractor or supplier.
People like myself always loudly pointed out that relying on proprietary Internet Explorer 6-only code would lock them into a single vendor and cause problems if Microsoft ever moved further towards standard code.
Together with ironies like it might have been less work to write something which was mostly/entirely standard HTML in the first place and that these applications may be served from Apache (running under a non Windows OS).
I wasn't aware that you could only have one browser installed on a computer at a time. What's wrong with installing Firefox for 99% of tasks, and also having IE6 available for the obsolete and soon to be extinct tasks that require it?
In such a situation "upgrading" IE is unlikely to be the best option. Since it is difficult to install multiple versions of it, at least under Windows.
Departments in the UK government spend £millions in testing software. Sad thing is, one department will do the testing, then another has to do exactly the same wasting money in the process.
Or they'll pay some contractor to do the testing. Then there will be a complex chain of sub contracting which will at each stage take their cut.
As long as it's supported by the software publisher or distributor in the form of security patches, the difference between security of new software and old software is rather marginal.
It may well be the case that the very new is actually a worst choice. The so called "bathtub curve" can be applicable to software. Even in cases where the supplier hasn't "sold" what is to all intents and purposes a badly tested "beta".
But the real reason to not get too much behind on upgrading is user experience: switching from XP to Vista feels differently, but not a whole lot. Switching from Vista to Win7 is also noticeable with the GUI and interface, but with even less differences than before. But switching from XP to 7 is quite a jump.
Would this "jump" be any smaller going from XP to Ubuntu? Which also means getting rid of complex to administer software licence systems, EULAs, CALs, etc, etc.
Every reactor produces unique isotopes. It's an absolutely unique fingerprint. It will be present in the plutonium (unless you are suggesting that someone is going to refine plutonium to near 100%) and has been used for decades.
The only obvious difficulty is likely to be getting hold of that fingerprint in the first place.
Air monitors during the cold war would harvest particles of radioactive debris from surface testing, permitting identification of which reactor the material was from.
On it's own this would only tell you if different weapons came from the same or different reactors. You'd need other information to identify the actual reactors. There's also the complication that a single weapons could have material from multiple sources in it.
Almost nobody actually makes a pure uranium bomb. Horribly inefficient stuff. You need a lot of it to do anything, which immediately makes missiles impractical.
Any viable terrorist nuclear attack would probably use a truck or container ship though.