I use both Linux (Fedora Core: where Men are Men and modules are scared) as well as OSX (10.3.9 - yeah, I'm lazy - on a dual G5).
I originally got a Mac because that's where all the affordable non-Windows 3D/CG compositing software was at that time. POV-Ray I love (on occasion), GIMP I love, Blender, umm, I love in an S&M sort of way (which is why I eventually bought AC3D)... but there was no compositing thingy back then for less than ten zillion bucks, a'la Shake and Maya.
Anyrate - a few years on, and I use both quite happily together. I still use AC3D on Linux to do mesh, DAZ|Studio and Poser on the Mac, and NFS binds the two machines seamlessly.
I love using either one in spite of the diffs. I have a link to Terminal sitting on the OSX Dock, and once I got used to the 'not-quite-but-okay-yeah-it's-BSD' setup, it's been a breeze to script and poke around on with bash.
Truth be told, if I could run DAZ|Studio or Poser natively on Linux, I'd probably slowly but surely let the Mac fade and go full-on Linux (they sort of run under Crossover Office and Cedega, but the render times are murder). The reason why is cost-effectiveness. Yes Macs are actually fairly competitive hardware-wise, but I can more easily build a new box in stages (buy bigger CPU/mobo/RAM combo, then a bigger HDD, and who gives a crap about the case style as long as the P/S works...), instead of plonking down $2500 in one go. (I guess I could buy a Mac Mini and just mod the guts into a bigger case... Hrm. Never thought of that).
Anyway, for the foreseeable future, I'll prolly be using both, and I have no problems with that.
That said, I don't use Windows. I wanted a safer and more flexible OS a long time ago, moved everything to BSD and Linux, and haven't looked back since.
Seriously - as soon as the log is full, cron a script to make the file immutable (cmd: chattr +i). Until you issue chattr -i, that fscker is locked, even to root. Any decent Backup/DR app will retain the immutable attribute as well. You can read it all day long, but you'll never write to it... 'course, you'll never be able to delete it either, but you can unlock it after it gets backed-up/transferred.
It ain't perfect (after all, the sysadmin can still mod the thing back to writeability), but it's an often overlooked means to make sure the file contents don't change, and it's easily scriptable.
You've just explained how society is successfully solving this problem. Now why were you complaining in the first place? Because you want to unsolve it?
Insofar as personal property, yes. Bars, privately-owned business, and any other private property should not have to suffer under government-enforced morals.
IOW, it wasn't "society" "solving" the "problem", it was a classic "for the children" style of argument taken in extremis because they've finally found a minority to harass and whip up hatred against, w/o fear of backlash or repercussion.
So basically your argument boils down to the teenager's "Well everybody else is doing it, so why can't I?"
No - but I do find it funny that no matter what story about air quality comes out, it invariably gets compared to the same thing - smoking.
In spite of this, we have industry belching out (in spite of progress) far more particulates and pollutants, and the average daily freeway load of cars pouring out far more in the way of toxic gases.
...and yet it's some anonymous schmuck who lights up a cigarette that gets held up in effigy.
Same with perfume/cologne, vehicle emissions (as covered elsewhere, and yes it often stinks), campfires, barbecues (esp. if the guy is cooking seafood on it), certain restaurants, dog excrement (which many owners have no problems at all with leaving in situ), and a whole host of other activities which human activities manage to promulgate.
...your point?
Since so few smokers through the years have taken it upon themselves to do the civilized thing and ensure that nobody around them has to experience their vile backwashed fumes, the victims are banding together to help the smokers learn what should have been common courtesy.
Nice stereotype... 'they're eeevil! eeevil I tell you! we're just the victims here, fighting one last desperate stand against Joe Camel Vader!"
Umm, no, and here's why: Smoking is banned pretty much inside of any building that isn't someone's private house* (bars are still somewhat exempt, but those are getting axed as well). Mass transit has banned it long ago - buses, trains, taxis, airlines... Outdoors and in one's own private vehicle is pretty much the only places left where anyone can legally smoke at all nowadays, so unless you're breaking-and-entering, or willfully entering a bar where people are already smoking, you have precious little to complain about in that department (after all, they were there before you - so how is it rude on their part if you're the interloper?)
* Las Vegas excepted, of course - but that is slowly beginning to change as well.
Smog (you should see a typical Chinese city nowadays - it's downright chewable), Toxic fumes from nearly every type of mechanical combustion and any outdoor process that stirs up dust, now this... and yet the news is still soaked with how 'those eeevil smokers' are out to kill us all with their eeevil second-hand smoke.
Will this study form a new scapegoat? Nah. It's easier to simply blame people who partake of a particular vice, especially since it's politically correct to hate anyone who participates in it.
On a less grouchy rantish side, where are the toner particulate measurements taken on average, anyway? The nearest printers in my office are 20 meters away...
Actually, no. Any clause that has the potential or actuality of violating your rights as granted by law is automatically null and void. It's pretty obvious that "we can change the terms at any time" has a huge potential of doing just that.
The reason they still get written in is because most people haven't the clue or desire to assert that aspect of contract law.
ROFLOL... trial? You thought there was going to be a TRIAL???? ROFLMHWPCAO.... Nah man, it's straight to Gitmo w/ ya...
There eventually is one, if you're a US citizen. The longer the wait, the bigger the lawsuit payout.
(and yes, there will be a gargantuan crowd of lawyers beating a path to your door for the percentage, the TV face-time, the resume'... then you get to write a book about it and sell the TV/movie rights, becoming a very wealthy person in the process).
To top that off, as far as prisons go? I'd much, much, much rather be held at Gitmo than a typical California prison, let alone nearly any other nation's prison. At least at Gitmo I'd get treated halfway decently, my anus would remain unviolated, and I wouldn't have to avoid gang drama or catching a shiv in my kidneys.;)
How do I know they won't grab some random fragment of a random file, take it completely out of context and present it as evidence that I was up to no good?
How do you know they wouldn't try that even without encryption being involved?
If the one and only bit of evidence on hand is the fact that someone uses an encrypted filesystem, good luck getting a conviction in criminal trial, especially if the defendant has a credible (-sounding) reason for doing so (e.g. "I've been bitten by viruses enough to want to protect myself from identity theft and I certainly don't trust a prosecutor that is obviously persecuting me right now, etc")
Absent any other damning evidence (other concrete evidence found at the defendant's house, financial records at banks and such pointing straight to the suspect, witness testimony, etc), the prosecutor is pretty much fscked if he thinks a jury (dumb as they may be) is going to buy any counter-argument to even a halfway cogent alibi. Everyone knows that Windows is insecure. Everyone knows someone who got a virus. Everyone knows that identity theft is a Bad Thing(tm).
Sorry, but I somehow don't see how a whole case could hinge on just one bit of evidence: "well, he has an encrypted filesystem, and he keeps invoking the 4th/5th amendments(?) in order to not unlock it, so you must convict..."
Then there's the whole "evidence of absence is not absence of evidence" bit.
This is exactly the attitude that causes the GP to have no positive feelings towards sysadmins.
Why would you be petty and vindictive?
Umm, Google up the acronym "BOFH", then get back to me.
Personally, and in real life, most of us are at least somewhat handy at being people persons. We have to be. Most SA's suffer under user and managerial stupidity and ignorance on a scale large enough to make any otherwise sane individual start shopping for AK-47's with a distant look in their eyes.
Developers, DBA's. all them folks? Pfah - they got it easy; they're not bound by the laws of physics and city safety ordinance, whenever some mucky-muck demands that $BUZZWORD be fulfilled. They don't have to deal with other human beings. They don't even have to bathe daily. Most will never lift anything heavier than 3kg at work (ever had to shovel five rackloads of server from the office server room down to the datacenter --and have it all back up-- in less than 18 hours, because $MGMT desperately needed to avoid some BS political consequence that they'd dug themselves into? Done that once - it isn't fun. Gets even worse when you know full well that $MGMT was warned about it for months in advance).
I'm fortunate now to work with users and managers who are not only kind, but many know what they're doing - some even grok fully what it is that I deal with on a daily basis. That said, it's a rare thing. Damned rare.
Why do System Administrators get a day? Why not Database Administrators? Why not Systems Architects? Why not Software Developers? All of these people are needed just as much as any of the others to achieve success.
Well, the votes all ran through my SMTP relay server on the way to the "Name that IT Appreciation Day" committee, and, well, you know...
Now quit your whining or or I'll re-route your MySQL replication slave addys to pull from a pr0n site.
"Hello, Human Resources? There's something about one of your employees that you need to know about..."
and they look at the file to see it's just the output of wget.
...and that/home/eldavojohn is still just fine and chock-full of normal stuff.
I mean, cripes, can we at least avoid tempting fate @ the server by not mucking around in/usr here?
Here... I'll fix it for 'im:
mkdir -p/home/eldavojohn/\!special
cd/home/eldavojohn
wget -m -nH http://barnyardlovers.com/pix/?N=D && chown -R eldavojohn:users/home/eldavojohn/\!special
echo "Dear Barnyard Lovers \n I'm having trouble renewing my subscription for next year. Please reply and tell me how I can change my credit card info. \n Thank you,\n eldavojohn" | mail -s "subscription renewal trouble, plz help" HR_Droid@company.com
- the radiation spreading over an area instead of hitting just the receiver
Place the receivers in, oh... North Dakota; RF spread control can already be feasibly done enough to keep spill-over to a dead-minimum (and the receivers should be large enough to catch that anyway). That, and IMHO, anybody who does air travel is likely already getting hammered with almost as much RF/cm2 thundering out of the ground and local ATC dishes than they'd likely get by standing betwixt power satellite and receiver panel... (that is, the panel is likely going to be rather big). Frequency diffs may affect this assertion, but not by much.
- atmosphere adding to the above effect
About 10-15 miles of it, yes. After that, it's gravy (vacuum itself doesn't diffuse for practical purposes, and you'd perhaps get residual interference from from Van Allen Belt and other solar/Earth magnetic concerns, save for the occasional (and rare!) solar CME's directed straight at Earth).
- interference with lower orbit objects. not a major problem for the system but may be for the object.
True. OTOH, we already set aside aerospace 'corridors' for atmospheric travel... why not set up similar "no entry" and "terminal control" areas for powersats?
btw, recent record of 42.8% efficiency of solar cells combined with this would be about 35%.
Which ain't bad at all, even when compared to the energy conversion efficiency in oil- or coal-generated steam turbines (and w/ few to no moving parts on the reception side of the house, maintenance would be pretty easy and cheap).
Science, because it is a principled method of determining how the world works, SHOULD have an influence over policy.
Consider these objectively valid hypotheses:
The most efficient way to deal with overpopulation is to simply kill n% of the population. As an alternative, that same n% can instead undergo forced sterilization.
The most efficient method of ending illegal immigration is to erect a lethal deterrent along any uncontrolled entry point (e.g. lay a 10-mile-deep minefield along the US-Mexico border and back it up with automated radar-controlled machine guns placed at strategic intervals).
The most efficient method of reducing pollution is to forcibly remove all polluting sources from private ownership, then regulate their use to certified and select individuals.
The most efficient and viable means of preventing an organ donor shortage is to remove needed organs from those members of society that do not contribute to it. Indeed, remove them form those who present the largest drain on societal and financial resources: prisoners.
Think these are far-fetched? Even worse has been implemented throughout history. Go ahead, please, try to show me more efficient methods of achieving any of these without invoking morals.
History is littered with the corpses of just as many victims of "science" and "rationality" as there are corpses generated by religious fervor and nationalism. I don't even have to invoke Godwin's Law to prove it, either.
Policy should always be tempered with morality - the only real argument is... which set of morals? That said, Science alone cannot be trusted to provide morals, or even scruples. Why? Because science is still performed and promulgated by the same frail, emotional, ego-afflicted, biased-as-hell creatures that morality and religion are practiced by: Human Beings.
Worshiping Science blindly is just as bad as worshiping any being, creature, or ideal with equal blindness. This is because even though the concept/ideal is perfect (or really, really close), it is often (and usually is) interpreted very badly by other human beings.
No, you cannot join the Mile High Club by taking your laptop with you to the bathroom and hitting the pr0n, no matter how much Cat5 you stuff into the carry-on for facilitating this.
Section 1. (a) Except to the extent provided in section 203(b)(1), (3), and (4) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(1), (3), and (4)), or in regulations, orders, directives, or licenses that may be issued pursuant to this order, and notwithstanding any contract entered into or any license or permit granted prior to the date of this order, all property and interests in property of the following persons, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense,
First off, the IEEPA. read it, because that's the limit, safety-valve, maximum, etc. ( the unabridged version is here (PDF format). It says, in a nutshell, that:
there is an annual renewal period after the first 12 months, by Congress. This wee presidential order is by nature restricted to that as well.
It can be terminated by Congressional legislation at any time
There is a list of people which you're not allowed to do biz with (the Wikipedia link shows the current list). If you do biz with those folks under stated conditions, you get your funds seized... not because "they don't like your politics" or other such happy hyperventilated horse excrement. They have to prove you're doing business with someone on that list.
So can we shut down the klaxons now? Or at least show me where (specifically) I may have produced an error (with proof, please).
Personally, and IMHO, there were much harsher means and policies in place during WW2 (not just concerning Japanese-American citizens), and the Presidents during that war were Democrats.
We recognize those acts as wrong.
Define "We".
Our government recognizes those acts as wrong.
No, later government officials (most notably the Clinton Administration) recognized a limited number of certain and specific acts carried out during that time as "wrong". As example, Italian-Americans up to 3rd-generation found their firearms confiscated by the FBI; just one of many, many expediencies that raise nary a peep these days.
Please don't generalize so much.
Is there some reason that you advocate we commit ANOTHER crime other than the fact that we had committed one before?
I have "advocated" no such thing. I am however asking for perspective. There is a difference.
In other words, you do not have to do anything to be affected by this law. All the Secretary has to assert is that you were probably going to do something that had a bad effect.
...which they would subsequently have to prove, or lose credibility (and any further effective use of such actions) rather instantly.
Let's say that they decided to do this all willy-nilly anyway:
If I were to march in a random anti-war protest, and the next day the gov't makes my bank account vapor-lock, then I could petition a judge and demand evidence and/or proof that I was somehow "posing a significant risk of committing" a violent act. If they couldn't prove it, not only is everything nice and unlocked (with the issuance of an injunction), but then they become liable for damages. Given politics, I'm very sure that {$CIVIL_RIGHTS_ORG} would be burning up the media with the outrage, that {$MEDIA_OUTLET} would be falling all over themselves to get the more dramatic parts of said seizures put out there (esp. if potentially starving/suffering kids were involved), that {$GOVT OFFICIAL} would have to put up or shut up much sooner than the appointed court/hearing date out of sheer political expediency, and that I would end up making a metric ton of cash not only from recovered damages via lawsuit (libel, slander, unlawful seizure, etc etc), but from interviews, appearances, book deals (possibly) and a whole host of other brand new opportunities that I would've never had before as an ordinary schmuck.
A similar parallel? Richard Jewell(sp?) and the Olympics bombing incident. The FBI rode him hard... until he sued them for harrassment, slander, libel, etc. IIRC, he made a rather respectable pile of cash from it, and the FBI wound up with a stigma and bad image that still lingers a bit, even 10+ years on.
Actually (even according to TFA), s/he has to consult with the Secretatries of Defense and State first.
Your reaction is a perfect (IMHO) example of how things get blasted out of proportion... bits and caveats get left out (usually unintentionally), and by the time the story reaches the fifth or sixth pair of ears (or in this case, eyes), it's been changed into something that doesn't resemble the story itself, let alone its context (which appears to be missing from the summary...)
Dunno either way yet, at least until I can see the original order, unedited and unabridged. Until then, everyone (intentionally or not) is going to put their own take on it.
Err, how many anti-war (or anti anything) folks are going to be transferring money overseas, exporting goods or monies intended to oppose Iraq's reconstruction, or otherwise engage in international commerce towards that end?
If they had something similar this in place back in the '70s and '80s, when shedloads of cash were being transferred from Boston to IRA operatives, how much sooner would that mess have ended?
Personally, and IMHO, there were much harsher means and policies in place during WW2 (not just concerning Japanese-American citizens), and the Presidents during that war were Democrats.
I'd have to look at the source for this thing, but I'm almost certain that there would have to be an expiration clause built into it, contingent on Iraq being able to hold up on its own for x period of time.
Slashdot Mirror
I use both Linux (Fedora Core: where Men are Men and modules are scared) as well as OSX (10.3.9 - yeah, I'm lazy - on a dual G5).
I originally got a Mac because that's where all the affordable non-Windows 3D/CG compositing software was at that time. POV-Ray I love (on occasion), GIMP I love, Blender, umm, I love in an S&M sort of way (which is why I eventually bought AC3D)... but there was no compositing thingy back then for less than ten zillion bucks, a'la Shake and Maya.
Anyrate - a few years on, and I use both quite happily together. I still use AC3D on Linux to do mesh, DAZ|Studio and Poser on the Mac, and NFS binds the two machines seamlessly.
I love using either one in spite of the diffs. I have a link to Terminal sitting on the OSX Dock, and once I got used to the 'not-quite-but-okay-yeah-it's-BSD' setup, it's been a breeze to script and poke around on with bash.
Truth be told, if I could run DAZ|Studio or Poser natively on Linux, I'd probably slowly but surely let the Mac fade and go full-on Linux (they sort of run under Crossover Office and Cedega, but the render times are murder). The reason why is cost-effectiveness. Yes Macs are actually fairly competitive hardware-wise, but I can more easily build a new box in stages (buy bigger CPU/mobo/RAM combo, then a bigger HDD, and who gives a crap about the case style as long as the P/S works...), instead of plonking down $2500 in one go. (I guess I could buy a Mac Mini and just mod the guts into a bigger case... Hrm. Never thought of that).
Anyway, for the foreseeable future, I'll prolly be using both, and I have no problems with that.
That said, I don't use Windows. I wanted a safer and more flexible OS a long time ago, moved everything to BSD and Linux, and haven't looked back since.
It ain't perfect (after all, the sysadmin can still mod the thing back to writeability), but it's an often overlooked means to make sure the file contents don't change, and it's easily scriptable.
Just a thought.
Insofar as personal property, yes. Bars, privately-owned business, and any other private property should not have to suffer under government-enforced morals.
IOW, it wasn't "society" "solving" the "problem", it was a classic "for the children" style of argument taken in extremis because they've finally found a minority to harass and whip up hatred against, w/o fear of backlash or repercussion.
No - but I do find it funny that no matter what story about air quality comes out, it invariably gets compared to the same thing - smoking.
In spite of this, we have industry belching out (in spite of progress) far more particulates and pollutants, and the average daily freeway load of cars pouring out far more in the way of toxic gases.
It's a proportional argument, IMHO.
Same with perfume/cologne, vehicle emissions (as covered elsewhere, and yes it often stinks), campfires, barbecues (esp. if the guy is cooking seafood on it), certain restaurants, dog excrement (which many owners have no problems at all with leaving in situ), and a whole host of other activities which human activities manage to promulgate.
...your point?
Since so few smokers through the years have taken it upon themselves to do the civilized thing and ensure that nobody around them has to experience their vile backwashed fumes, the victims are banding together to help the smokers learn what should have been common courtesy.Nice stereotype... 'they're eeevil! eeevil I tell you! we're just the victims here, fighting one last desperate stand against Joe Camel Vader!"
Umm, no, and here's why: Smoking is banned pretty much inside of any building that isn't someone's private house* (bars are still somewhat exempt, but those are getting axed as well). Mass transit has banned it long ago - buses, trains, taxis, airlines... Outdoors and in one's own private vehicle is pretty much the only places left where anyone can legally smoke at all nowadays, so unless you're breaking-and-entering, or willfully entering a bar where people are already smoking, you have precious little to complain about in that department (after all, they were there before you - so how is it rude on their part if you're the interloper?)
* Las Vegas excepted, of course - but that is slowly beginning to change as well.
Will this study form a new scapegoat? Nah. It's easier to simply blame people who partake of a particular vice, especially since it's politically correct to hate anyone who participates in it.
On a less grouchy rantish side, where are the toner particulate measurements taken on average, anyway? The nearest printers in my office are 20 meters away...
The reason they still get written in is because most people haven't the clue or desire to assert that aspect of contract law.
There eventually is one, if you're a US citizen. The longer the wait, the bigger the lawsuit payout.
(and yes, there will be a gargantuan crowd of lawyers beating a path to your door for the percentage, the TV face-time, the resume'... then you get to write a book about it and sell the TV/movie rights, becoming a very wealthy person in the process).
To top that off, as far as prisons go? I'd much, much, much rather be held at Gitmo than a typical California prison, let alone nearly any other nation's prison. At least at Gitmo I'd get treated halfway decently, my anus would remain unviolated, and I wouldn't have to avoid gang drama or catching a shiv in my kidneys. ;)
I'll have a new job before you are even out of the hospital.
You fuck with the wrong person, you may find a gun in your mouth.
How do you know they wouldn't try that even without encryption being involved?
Absent any other damning evidence (other concrete evidence found at the defendant's house, financial records at banks and such pointing straight to the suspect, witness testimony, etc), the prosecutor is pretty much fscked if he thinks a jury (dumb as they may be) is going to buy any counter-argument to even a halfway cogent alibi. Everyone knows that Windows is insecure. Everyone knows someone who got a virus. Everyone knows that identity theft is a Bad Thing(tm).
Sorry, but I somehow don't see how a whole case could hinge on just one bit of evidence: "well, he has an encrypted filesystem, and he keeps invoking the 4th/5th amendments(?) in order to not unlock it, so you must convict..."
Then there's the whole "evidence of absence is not absence of evidence" bit.
Not much left to be useful after all that...
Why would you be petty and vindictive?
Umm, Google up the acronym "BOFH", then get back to me.
Personally, and in real life, most of us are at least somewhat handy at being people persons. We have to be. Most SA's suffer under user and managerial stupidity and ignorance on a scale large enough to make any otherwise sane individual start shopping for AK-47's with a distant look in their eyes.
Developers, DBA's. all them folks? Pfah - they got it easy; they're not bound by the laws of physics and city safety ordinance, whenever some mucky-muck demands that $BUZZWORD be fulfilled. They don't have to deal with other human beings. They don't even have to bathe daily. Most will never lift anything heavier than 3kg at work (ever had to shovel five rackloads of server from the office server room down to the datacenter --and have it all back up-- in less than 18 hours, because $MGMT desperately needed to avoid some BS political consequence that they'd dug themselves into? Done that once - it isn't fun. Gets even worse when you know full well that $MGMT was warned about it for months in advance).
I'm fortunate now to work with users and managers who are not only kind, but many know what they're doing - some even grok fully what it is that I deal with on a daily basis. That said, it's a rare thing. Damned rare.
Well, the votes all ran through my SMTP relay server on the way to the "Name that IT Appreciation Day" committee, and, well, you know...
Now quit your whining or or I'll re-route your MySQL replication slave addys to pull from a pr0n site.
(cripes folks... I'm only kidding!)
rm -rf /usr/staff/eldavojohn /usr/staff/eldavojohn /usr/staff/eldavojohn/hello.jpg
mkdir
wget http://goatse.cx/hello.jpg >
chown eldavojohn hello.jpg
"Hello, Human Resources? There's something about one of your employees that you need to know about..."
and they look at the file to see it's just the output of wget.I mean, cripes, can we at least avoid tempting fate @ the server by not mucking around in /usr here?
Here... I'll fix it for 'im:
mkdir -p /home/eldavojohn/\!special
cd /home/eldavojohn
wget -m -nH http://barnyardlovers.com/pix/?N=D && chown -R eldavojohn:users /home/eldavojohn/\!special
echo "Dear Barnyard Lovers \n I'm having trouble renewing my subscription for next year. Please reply and tell me how I can change my credit card info. \n Thank you,\n eldavojohn" | mail -s "subscription renewal trouble, plz help" HR_Droid@company.com
I mean, sheesh...
(okay, okay - I'll go back to work now...)
Place the receivers in, oh... North Dakota; RF spread control can already be feasibly done enough to keep spill-over to a dead-minimum (and the receivers should be large enough to catch that anyway). That, and IMHO, anybody who does air travel is likely already getting hammered with almost as much RF/cm2 thundering out of the ground and local ATC dishes than they'd likely get by standing betwixt power satellite and receiver panel... (that is, the panel is likely going to be rather big). Frequency diffs may affect this assertion, but not by much.
- atmosphere adding to the above effectAbout 10-15 miles of it, yes. After that, it's gravy (vacuum itself doesn't diffuse for practical purposes, and you'd perhaps get residual interference from from Van Allen Belt and other solar/Earth magnetic concerns, save for the occasional (and rare!) solar CME's directed straight at Earth).
- interference with lower orbit objects. not a major problem for the system but may be for the object.True. OTOH, we already set aside aerospace 'corridors' for atmospheric travel... why not set up similar "no entry" and "terminal control" areas for powersats?
btw, recent record of 42.8% efficiency of solar cells combined with this would be about 35%.Which ain't bad at all, even when compared to the energy conversion efficiency in oil- or coal-generated steam turbines (and w/ few to no moving parts on the reception side of the house, maintenance would be pretty easy and cheap).
Consider these objectively valid hypotheses:
Think these are far-fetched? Even worse has been implemented throughout history. Go ahead, please, try to show me more efficient methods of achieving any of these without invoking morals.
History is littered with the corpses of just as many victims of "science" and "rationality" as there are corpses generated by religious fervor and nationalism. I don't even have to invoke Godwin's Law to prove it, either.
Policy should always be tempered with morality - the only real argument is... which set of morals? That said, Science alone cannot be trusted to provide morals, or even scruples. Why? Because science is still performed and promulgated by the same frail, emotional, ego-afflicted, biased-as-hell creatures that morality and religion are practiced by: Human Beings.
Worshiping Science blindly is just as bad as worshiping any being, creature, or ideal with equal blindness. This is because even though the concept/ideal is perfect (or really, really close), it is often (and usually is) interpreted very badly by other human beings.
No, you cannot join the Mile High Club by taking your laptop with you to the bathroom and hitting the pr0n, no matter how much Cat5 you stuff into the carry-on for facilitating this.
Just got done doing that - response is here: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=252591&cid =19917729
I summarized it here: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=252591&cid =19917729
Section 1. (a) Except to the extent provided in section 203(b)(1), (3), and (4) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(1), (3), and (4)), or in regulations, orders, directives, or licenses that may be issued pursuant to this order, and notwithstanding any contract entered into or any license or permit granted prior to the date of this order, all property and interests in property of the following persons, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense,
First off, the IEEPA. read it, because that's the limit, safety-valve, maximum, etc. ( the unabridged version is here (PDF format). It says, in a nutshell, that:
So can we shut down the klaxons now? Or at least show me where (specifically) I may have produced an error (with proof, please).
We recognize those acts as wrong.
Define "We".
Our government recognizes those acts as wrong.
No, later government officials (most notably the Clinton Administration) recognized a limited number of certain and specific acts carried out during that time as "wrong". As example, Italian-Americans up to 3rd-generation found their firearms confiscated by the FBI; just one of many, many expediencies that raise nary a peep these days.
Please don't generalize so much.
Is there some reason that you advocate we commit ANOTHER crime other than the fact that we had committed one before?I have "advocated" no such thing. I am however asking for perspective. There is a difference.
In other words, you do not have to do anything to be affected by this law. All the Secretary has to assert is that you were probably going to do something that had a bad effect.
Let's say that they decided to do this all willy-nilly anyway:
If I were to march in a random anti-war protest, and the next day the gov't makes my bank account vapor-lock, then I could petition a judge and demand evidence and/or proof that I was somehow "posing a significant risk of committing" a violent act. If they couldn't prove it, not only is everything nice and unlocked (with the issuance of an injunction), but then they become liable for damages. Given politics, I'm very sure that {$CIVIL_RIGHTS_ORG} would be burning up the media with the outrage, that {$MEDIA_OUTLET} would be falling all over themselves to get the more dramatic parts of said seizures put out there (esp. if potentially starving/suffering kids were involved), that {$GOVT OFFICIAL} would have to put up or shut up much sooner than the appointed court/hearing date out of sheer political expediency, and that I would end up making a metric ton of cash not only from recovered damages via lawsuit (libel, slander, unlawful seizure, etc etc), but from interviews, appearances, book deals (possibly) and a whole host of other brand new opportunities that I would've never had before as an ordinary schmuck.
A similar parallel? Richard Jewell(sp?) and the Olympics bombing incident. The FBI rode him hard... until he sued them for harrassment, slander, libel, etc. IIRC, he made a rather respectable pile of cash from it, and the FBI wound up with a stigma and bad image that still lingers a bit, even 10+ years on.
Your reaction is a perfect (IMHO) example of how things get blasted out of proportion... bits and caveats get left out (usually unintentionally), and by the time the story reaches the fifth or sixth pair of ears (or in this case, eyes), it's been changed into something that doesn't resemble the story itself, let alone its context (which appears to be missing from the summary...)
Dunno either way yet, at least until I can see the original order, unedited and unabridged. Until then, everyone (intentionally or not) is going to put their own take on it.
If they had something similar this in place back in the '70s and '80s, when shedloads of cash were being transferred from Boston to IRA operatives, how much sooner would that mess have ended?
Personally, and IMHO, there were much harsher means and policies in place during WW2 (not just concerning Japanese-American citizens), and the Presidents during that war were Democrats.
I'd have to look at the source for this thing, but I'm almost certain that there would have to be an expiration clause built into it, contingent on Iraq being able to hold up on its own for x period of time.
(and if we find life somewhere off-planet, all bets are off, yo...)