I've never been approached by Christians pushing religion...
I don't believe you. Look in the bedside table in your hotel room, and you'll find a Gideon Bible. Watch a TV show, and you'll hear someone wishing someone else, "God speed." Answer the door bell on any Saturday morning, and you'll find Mormon missionaries. Congress starts every session with a prayer, and you need to profess Xtianity to even get elected.
You're either lying, or you're as thick as a brick. Infidels ("unbelievers") don't do any of that sort of thing. We don't much care what mythical sky-thingies you believe in as it's none of our business. You should think the same of us. We wish.
Interesting, but how much energy does it take to run this thing? (they call it a 'battery', but I don't think it actually generates electricity).
Re-read TFA. They came up with this desalination gizmo by reversing another gizmo that does create electrical energy.
I think this's brilliant thinking. They didn't just read the paper. They read it, understood its implications, and extrapolated them in the opposite direction. That's what I expect from scientists. I wish I saw that kind of thinking more often.
As for this gizmo, I'd like to see it built as a group of looping boxes, progressively yielding purer product as it goes through them in sequence. Add other boxes in the chain to filter out other stuff that this gizmo doesn't filter, and you end up with an office water-cooler machine that produces pure water and recyclable sludge. I'd definitely buy one!
For me, the esthetic thrill of blowing away Windows has always been a joy well worth paying that little bit of the full purchase price for. Feature!:-)
This is called "sour grapes".
"Sour grapes" is wanting something you fail to attain, then saying, "I didn't want it anyway."
When I blow away Windows by installing FLOSS in its place, I'm getting exactly what I want from a computer, and blowing away Windows is seriously esthetically pleasing to me.
Anyone who quotes [a] comedian as [having] some kind of relevant point is being stupid... [especially] George Carlin.
That may be the dumbest thing I've ever seen here. Do you realize you just trashed almost the entirety of culture? Fiction, humour, poetry,... They say nothing of any relevance or worth to you?
You should just climb into your coffin now. You're obviously not getting anything you value from living.
Your Founding Fathers were mostly "deists", not religious. Separation of Church and State came down from the Puritans who left England to get away from religion imposed on them by gov't edict.
I just noticed that, without even realizing I'd done so, I appear to have trained my brain to interpret "Microsoft" as "Holy, !@#$ing boring, Batman!" That's also true for all the software designed to run on their "OS". Lotus Notes, CuteFTP, gag me with a spoon!
I don't give a flying !@#$, nor a rat's ass, what they do or do not do. I. Just. Don't. Care. Huh.
Why I felt the urge to care enough to even write this is a mystery.
We don't really yet understand what's actually going on, and it's a very complex system. If we don't understand it, we could easily screw it up even more by doing the wrong thing.
That means we shouldn't burn any fossil fuels because they certainly have an effect on the climate.
I agree. I'm strongly in favour of going all nuclear power.
In any case, when the fate of the human race is at stake, Prevention Science is a better prescription than "healthy skepticism"
Not necessarily. "Do something!" is not the same thing as "do the right thing." We don't really yet understand what's actually going on, and it's a very complex system. If we don't understand it, we could easily screw it up even more by doing the wrong thing.
It's really very wrong to say skepticism is "healthy"...
No, it's not. Skeptical doesn't mean blinded to the truth. It just means "prove it." It's just science. You don't get to say something is until you back it up with credible proofs. Maybe you need to read more Carl Sagan.
UAVs in use domestically are disturbing because they provide a greater intelligence-gathering capability than regular aircraft at a much lower cost.
Think deeper. You sound like a Luddite. This stuff doesn't always need to be seen as the beginnings of Skynet. If the LEOs get better, finer grained information, that would be a plus. It would enable them to weed out innocuous situations from potentially truly dangerous situations. In fact, that's true as well on the battlefield. Is that an Al Quaida aiming a rifle, or a Reuters photographer with a camera?
I would have appreciated that kind of thing a couple of years ago when three teams of SWAT showed up next door, all carrying StreetSweepers (automatic shotguns), all because the neighbour had been seen cleaning up the flying rats (magpies) in his yard with a pellet rifle. If the cops had had better intel., they could have sent one patrolman over to write him a ticket instead.
This is about internal police comm channels. What legitimate reason is there to allow others to tap into that?
I am a communications (ham) volunteer for the county.
So, civilian oversight. It would be perfectly reasonable for City Hall to insist that you be given a receiver that decrypts the police' encrypted comms. Perhaps news outlets should lobby for the same capability.
For the other things you mention, you need both send and receive capability, also easily do-able on other not "police only" channels.
For all of this, I think adding encryption to the system is a plus for all. It maximizes the S/N ratio ensuring only legit entities have access to it. Considering what we've seen lately, I can easily foresee the day when 4chan/Anonymous gets the bright idea to muck around with police comms just to make the cops look bad, for the lulz.
This sounds like a fairly easily managed situation. I don't see where controversy enters into it.
People got used to have access to something (and I'm sure some have a legitimate reason for it)...
This is about internal police comm channels. What legitimate reason is there to allow others to tap into that? Freedom of the press and all that, sure, but facilitation of the press by the police, why?
The cops don't owe the press anything, and they should be thankful for the free ride they've had until now.
Fifth Estate, go do your damned job. It's your job to figure out how to do that.
The price for the Windows license is factored into the price of the computer. Just because there was no specific price tag on the Windows license doesn't mean there is nothing to refund.
Then again, think of it from the point of view of a p2p "pirate." Yeah, there's bits on the box that're proprietary software, but if I boot the thing with a live Linux CD and wipe those bits off during the Linux install, what was lost? Nothing.
Consider those original bits an offering that was turned down. If that offering counted for some part of the purchase price, I'd expect a refund of that portion since it wasn't accepted, however, I've never much cared for the arguments surrounding this topic. For me, the esthetic thrill of blowing away Windows has always been a joy well worth paying that little bit of the full purchase price for. Feature!:-)
Now, me, I totally get where you're coming from, but it *is* a Luddite-ish stance. Kids these days lump email in with non-anon ftp, telnet, and gopher. You'd be better off telling people to use social media responsibly than to tell them to eschew it.
Like diaspora (if that ever gets anywhere)?
Totally bought into it, have you? With all these smart, knowledgable geeks here trying to educate you on what you're missing in it, you're still going to go there? Because everyone else is, if for nothing else. Holy stupid, Batman.
I'm astonished people *want* to give their personal lives over to an apparent/effective monopoly so it can sell them to advertisers, and all you get in return is,... what? An FB wall?
Go ahead and characterize me as Luddite. Beats being a simpleton tool of Zuck's corporate vision. In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, "What an imBECile. What an ultra-maroon."
FB is an improvement over other forms of digital communication, how exactly?
If I'm selling family-planning-coat-hangers, I only want teenage girls with religious parents to see the ads...
How's about you sell family planning scissors to teenage boys. Multi-purpose: vasectomy or full eunuch. Bonus, both are permanent solutions to their problem.
They can't be done by ourselves. These banks will never let you see their books. Even if they did you do not have ability nor the cash needed to go after them.
You must be under the impression that people like me want to chuck everything out and start again from scratch, like the Soviet Union becoming Russia again. That's not the case.
Every business has regular audits now and there's nothing to prevent that from continuing, and there's plenty of reasons why it should continue. Any business or bank unwilling to submit to such things would soon run out of people willing to invest in it. Word gets around. "Don't trust those guys!"
People aren't stupid, generally speaking. We can tell the good from the bad, we can vote with our feet, and we can learn from experience. We can also be pretty powerful when we band together in a common interest. CS losing 0.5 billion to an inside job ought to cost that board of directors their jobs, at least. They failed to do what they were hired to do, meaning take control of the organization for the good of the shareholders.
All I'm saying is, the way it's done now by gov't TLAs is horrifically expensive and provably doesn't work, so why do we bother handing that function off to gov't when we're better equipped to do it ourselves at far less cost and social/societal disruption than when gov't does it?
If you can't see that, you lack imagination. Gov't, in *most* respects, is simply unnecessary overhead expended for very little gain. Besides that, it's inherently dangerous, and for our own good we should have a lot less of it, not more.
That, in a nutshell is why I think non-libertarians are a little crazy.:-) You're the Utopian dreamers if you think your way's better.
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I've never been approached by Christians pushing religion ...
I don't believe you. Look in the bedside table in your hotel room, and you'll find a Gideon Bible. Watch a TV show, and you'll hear someone wishing someone else, "God speed." Answer the door bell on any Saturday morning, and you'll find Mormon missionaries. Congress starts every session with a prayer, and you need to profess Xtianity to even get elected.
You're either lying, or you're as thick as a brick. Infidels ("unbelievers") don't do any of that sort of thing. We don't much care what mythical sky-thingies you believe in as it's none of our business. You should think the same of us. We wish.
Interesting, but how much energy does it take to run this thing? (they call it a 'battery', but I don't think it actually generates electricity).
Re-read TFA. They came up with this desalination gizmo by reversing another gizmo that does create electrical energy.
I think this's brilliant thinking. They didn't just read the paper. They read it, understood its implications, and extrapolated them in the opposite direction. That's what I expect from scientists. I wish I saw that kind of thinking more often.
As for this gizmo, I'd like to see it built as a group of looping boxes, progressively yielding purer product as it goes through them in sequence. Add other boxes in the chain to filter out other stuff that this gizmo doesn't filter, and you end up with an office water-cooler machine that produces pure water and recyclable sludge. I'd definitely buy one!
Maganese oxide? I thought [Manganese] was used for Galvanizing metal.
Don't you mean zinc?
For me, the esthetic thrill of blowing away Windows has always been a joy well worth paying that little bit of the full purchase price for. Feature! :-)
This is called "sour grapes".
"Sour grapes" is wanting something you fail to attain, then saying, "I didn't want it anyway."
When I blow away Windows by installing FLOSS in its place, I'm getting exactly what I want from a computer, and blowing away Windows is seriously esthetically pleasing to me.
So, bite me. :-)
Anyone who quotes [a] comedian as [having] some kind of relevant point is being stupid ... [especially] George Carlin.
That may be the dumbest thing I've ever seen here. Do you realize you just trashed almost the entirety of culture? Fiction, humour, poetry, ... They say nothing of any relevance or worth to you?
You should just climb into your coffin now. You're obviously not getting anything you value from living.
Read a history book, would ya'?
I'll bet I've read more of them than you.
Your Founding Fathers were mostly "deists", not religious. Separation of Church and State came down from the Puritans who left England to get away from religion imposed on them by gov't edict.
... not because Microsoft is evil ...
I just noticed that, without even realizing I'd done so, I appear to have trained my brain to interpret "Microsoft" as "Holy, !@#$ing boring, Batman!" That's also true for all the software designed to run on their "OS". Lotus Notes, CuteFTP, gag me with a spoon!
I don't give a flying !@#$, nor a rat's ass, what they do or do not do. I. Just. Don't. Care. Huh.
Why I felt the urge to care enough to even write this is a mystery.
Cool. :-)
I have contacted the attorney general and I have posted My home for sale ...
# crontab -e
i
1 8 * * * echo "take your meds!"
wq!
And here I thought that the movie version of V for Vendetta was just a piece of thinly veiled propaganda against the latest Bush administration.
So, you haven't seen the movie yet? Been living under a rock, have you?
Don't believe in a creator? That's fine, but understand this country was founded by [Religious] people ...
Not true. Not even close. Cf. "Separation of Church and State."
[Eternal vigilance is the only way to keep idiots from re-writing history.]
Can I get modded up now?
For simply agreeing with the post you replied to? We're not that cheap yet (I hope).
Here in America, the police would just mow down the crowd with machine-gun fire and call it a day.
There in the USA, the crowd would show up armed to the teeth, and the cops would be running for their lives if they weren't fragging their superiors.
You know when someone explains something funny, like a joke or a riddle, and it becomes less funny.
Like you just did?
Oh, and are you aware that questions are supposed to be completed with question marks? Just curious.
We don't really yet understand what's actually going on, and it's a very complex system. If we don't understand it, we could easily screw it up even more by doing the wrong thing.
That means we shouldn't burn any fossil fuels because they certainly have an effect on the climate.
I agree. I'm strongly in favour of going all nuclear power.
In any case, when the fate of the human race is at stake, Prevention Science is a better prescription than "healthy skepticism"
Not necessarily. "Do something!" is not the same thing as "do the right thing." We don't really yet understand what's actually going on, and it's a very complex system. If we don't understand it, we could easily screw it up even more by doing the wrong thing.
It's really very wrong to say skepticism is "healthy" ...
No, it's not. Skeptical doesn't mean blinded to the truth. It just means "prove it." It's just science. You don't get to say something is until you back it up with credible proofs. Maybe you need to read more Carl Sagan.
you seem to assume this has anything to do with catching "bad guys".
The "dumbth" is strong with you today. :-P
UAVs in use domestically are disturbing because they provide a greater intelligence-gathering capability than regular aircraft at a much lower cost.
Think deeper. You sound like a Luddite. This stuff doesn't always need to be seen as the beginnings of Skynet. If the LEOs get better, finer grained information, that would be a plus. It would enable them to weed out innocuous situations from potentially truly dangerous situations. In fact, that's true as well on the battlefield. Is that an Al Quaida aiming a rifle, or a Reuters photographer with a camera?
I would have appreciated that kind of thing a couple of years ago when three teams of SWAT showed up next door, all carrying StreetSweepers (automatic shotguns), all because the neighbour had been seen cleaning up the flying rats (magpies) in his yard with a pellet rifle. If the cops had had better intel., they could have sent one patrolman over to write him a ticket instead.
This is about internal police comm channels. What legitimate reason is there to allow others to tap into that?
I am a communications (ham) volunteer for the county.
So, civilian oversight. It would be perfectly reasonable for City Hall to insist that you be given a receiver that decrypts the police' encrypted comms. Perhaps news outlets should lobby for the same capability.
For the other things you mention, you need both send and receive capability, also easily do-able on other not "police only" channels.
For all of this, I think adding encryption to the system is a plus for all. It maximizes the S/N ratio ensuring only legit entities have access to it. Considering what we've seen lately, I can easily foresee the day when 4chan/Anonymous gets the bright idea to muck around with police comms just to make the cops look bad, for the lulz.
This sounds like a fairly easily managed situation. I don't see where controversy enters into it.
People got used to have access to something (and I'm sure some have a legitimate reason for it) ...
This is about internal police comm channels. What legitimate reason is there to allow others to tap into that? Freedom of the press and all that, sure, but facilitation of the press by the police, why?
The cops don't owe the press anything, and they should be thankful for the free ride they've had until now.
Fifth Estate, go do your damned job. It's your job to figure out how to do that.
"We believe this file is encrypted using stenography, give us the password"
My Mom's going to be real surprised when I tell her she was an accomplished cryptographer. Perhaps you meant "steganography"?
Then again, I suppose shorthand does sort of fit into the realm of crypto.
The price for the Windows license is factored into the price of the computer. Just because there was no specific price tag on the Windows license doesn't mean there is nothing to refund.
Then again, think of it from the point of view of a p2p "pirate." Yeah, there's bits on the box that're proprietary software, but if I boot the thing with a live Linux CD and wipe those bits off during the Linux install, what was lost? Nothing.
Consider those original bits an offering that was turned down. If that offering counted for some part of the purchase price, I'd expect a refund of that portion since it wasn't accepted, however, I've never much cared for the arguments surrounding this topic. For me, the esthetic thrill of blowing away Windows has always been a joy well worth paying that little bit of the full purchase price for. Feature! :-)
Now, me, I totally get where you're coming from, but it *is* a Luddite-ish stance. Kids these days lump email in with non-anon ftp, telnet, and gopher. You'd be better off telling people to use social media responsibly than to tell them to eschew it.
Like diaspora (if that ever gets anywhere)?
Totally bought into it, have you? With all these smart, knowledgable geeks here trying to educate you on what you're missing in it, you're still going to go there? Because everyone else is, if for nothing else. Holy stupid, Batman.
I'm astonished people *want* to give their personal lives over to an apparent/effective monopoly so it can sell them to advertisers, and all you get in return is, ... what? An FB wall?
Go ahead and characterize me as Luddite. Beats being a simpleton tool of Zuck's corporate vision. In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, "What an imBECile. What an ultra-maroon."
FB is an improvement over other forms of digital communication, how exactly?
If I'm selling family-planning-coat-hangers, I only want teenage girls with religious parents to see the ads ...
How's about you sell family planning scissors to teenage boys. Multi-purpose: vasectomy or full eunuch. Bonus, both are permanent solutions to their problem.
The CFO would never mention it.
They can't be done by ourselves. These banks will never let you see their books. Even if they did you do not have ability nor the cash needed to go after them.
You must be under the impression that people like me want to chuck everything out and start again from scratch, like the Soviet Union becoming Russia again. That's not the case.
Every business has regular audits now and there's nothing to prevent that from continuing, and there's plenty of reasons why it should continue. Any business or bank unwilling to submit to such things would soon run out of people willing to invest in it. Word gets around. "Don't trust those guys!"
People aren't stupid, generally speaking. We can tell the good from the bad, we can vote with our feet, and we can learn from experience. We can also be pretty powerful when we band together in a common interest. CS losing 0.5 billion to an inside job ought to cost that board of directors their jobs, at least. They failed to do what they were hired to do, meaning take control of the organization for the good of the shareholders.
All I'm saying is, the way it's done now by gov't TLAs is horrifically expensive and provably doesn't work, so why do we bother handing that function off to gov't when we're better equipped to do it ourselves at far less cost and social/societal disruption than when gov't does it?
If you can't see that, you lack imagination. Gov't, in *most* respects, is simply unnecessary overhead expended for very little gain. Besides that, it's inherently dangerous, and for our own good we should have a lot less of it, not more.
That, in a nutshell is why I think non-libertarians are a little crazy. :-) You're the Utopian dreamers if you think your way's better.