I just don't see Google ever becoming an auto maker, that's so far removed from their core business.
Considering their re-organization into Alphabet Inc., they may well be considering pushing even further afield than they already have. Would that include a car division? Probably not, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they sought out an established partner; but, they have show a willingness to jump into markets with large, entrenched players (e.g.: Google Fiber).
Yay, Moral Relativism! So while we're agreeing to disagree, we'll just have to agree to disagree that it is wrong for me to drop by, tie you up, skull fuck you in both eye sockets and take all of your possessions. After all, I see nothing wrong with me doing any of that to you, so it's OK and we'll just agree to disagree.
And this would be why no sane society bases itself on Moral Relativism, it sounds fun right up until someone with weapons and organizational skills realizes that he can set himself up as a dictator, and does so. And then the anarchist utopia ends and we get Somalia. Paradoxically, in order for a free society to function you have to have good laws which don't leave things open to such ridiculous interpretation. While some of the lines are pretty easy to draw, I think we can all agree that skull fucking someone is not OK, others are going to be a little tougher. Unsurprisingly, in those gray areas people tend to disagree. At this point, the best solution for deciding those gray areas, which we have come up with, is to have democratically elected representatives argue it out and make a final rule. And, in order to keep our society out of the hell of anarchy, we all go along with it and work though the system to change things we don't like. I think I'll have to agree with Mr. Churchill on this one, "Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
So which one sounds better to you?
A society based on rules which keeps everyone mostly free but brings overwhelming force to bear to maintain an acceptable standard
Or
Anarchy and the possibility of a random guy dropping by to skull fuck you
I'm gonna stick with my laws, even if they are screwed up from time to time. At least I have the option to change them without a gunfight.
The Constitution puts limits on the actions of the government. Not 'the actions of the government within the borders of the admitted states.'
Just to nitpick, but it really is important because of the context. The Constitution does not place limits on the actions of the government. The US Constitution grants the government powers. The problem is that a number of people were worried that the government would work to grow those powers in an unbounded way and so they insisted on the Bill of Rights as an check on that behavior. The counter argument to the Bill of Rights was that it would eventually be turned around and used as an exhaustive list of the rights of the people and the limits of government power. The fact that many people today now believe that this is the case, and will state that "The Constitution puts limits on the actions of the government" shows that the detractors of the Bill of Rights were right. Technically, it was because of these fears that the Ninth and Tenth Amendments were added; however, FDR managed to murder the Ninth and the Tenth sort of withered away during the twentieth century.
Still, based on the (probably vain) hope that we might breath some life back into the Tenth, I tend to pick at this issue:
The US Constitution does not limit the power of US Government, it grants powers to the US Government. The US Government does not have any power not specifically granted to it by the US Constitution.
Ya, about that. The US average for solving murder cases is floating at about 60% [1] I'm not sure what is for theft, but given that fewer resources are brought to bear for a theft than a murder, I'm gonna guess that it's as bad or worse.
Was gonna say the same thing. Get a cheap NAS, put the two drives in it, go with RAID 0.
The D-Link DNS-321 is $120 from Newegg. It runs Linux and can handle all your Web/FTP/Samba needs.
Spend some more time with it to learn the aliases; and try hitting every once in a while, it's kinda like having intellisense at the command line. As a system admin, I love powershell and am using it constantly. Granted, it does help that I'm on Exchange 2007 and we have a few Server 2008 boxes deployed. Also, what rabbit994 said is spot on for it's best usage, scripting. Sure, this is largely just MS copying the *nix shell, but it works well and having the.NET API exposed for scripting and command lines is very nice. Like rabbit994, I end up having to add chunks of users all at once (I'm in a University environment) each with a mailbox, a user folder, a web folder and an FTP folder; create the distribution group and security group for the new batch of students, add all of the students to said groups, add those groups to our higher level groups; oh, and while I'm at it make sure that all of the ACL's are correct for each of the student's folders. And, just for the fun of it, I like to keep each batch of students in their own OU in Active Directory, it makes applying group specific GPO's easier. It shouldn't be a big surprise that as a manual process this takes anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes per student. With powershell, I run a script on my laptop which consumes a CSV file of student names and a command line parameter for the group number and within seconds all of that is done for all of the students.
As for it not being on any system I sit down on, that does suck. However, what did you expect MS to do make it a critical patch for all systems? On the other hand, we'll eventually get to that point anyway. Powershell is bundled with Windows 7 and Server 2008. While some folks may hang on to XP until they die, most of us (especially businesses) will upgrade and this problem will simply disappear.
Also on the nuke idea, why limit the choice between kinetic and nuclear weapons to either/or? Take the same type of tech we are currently using for the BLU-116 Bunker Buster bomb, add engines, an optic guidance system and replace the chemical explosive warhead with a nuclear warhead. Scale as needed. It would make the lake of an atmosphere outside the ship a plus.
Sure, I would expect counter measures on large scale warships, but we have that now and weapons like this can still get through and hit their target, why do we expect that to change?
That's another one of the things which I think could help our current situation in the US for a number of markets. Disallow vertical integration in communications. For example, if you are providing communications services you cannot own the network and vice versa; nor can one parent company hold one of each. This would include phone, internet and TV. AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, etc. would be broken up into different companies. One would be a network provider which just sells access to the network and the other would be the service provider who buys access to the network and resells it to the customers. The network companies would then become similar to other public utilities which are private companies given exclusive monopolies in a region in exchange for government oversight.
The spectrum is auctioned off the highest bidder. For a few billion dollars the entrenched interests can just gobble it all up regardless of whether or not they need it or intend to deploy on it.
This has always been one of my biggest complaints about the FCC's wireless spectrum auctions. There really needs to be a use requirement attached to the sale. For example, anytime a company/individual purchases a chunk of spectrum, there are required to put it to use. If they don't utilize it or under-utilize* it it gets taken back from them (no refunds) and then re-auctioned.
* - Under utilization would cover buying a chunk of spectrum which can carry far more information on it than a company does regularly. In which case, that chunk should be stripped from them and a less valuable one given for their current use. This is to avoid the purchase of a valuable chunk and then using it to send control messages or the like to avoid it appearing unused.
You realise other networks are likely to follow suit?
I doubt it, it only takes one carrier to realize that they can pickup a ton of customers by offering an unlimited plan. They will simply need to figure out the price point at which it works for them financially, and get ready to deal with being crushed under the rush of customers. Take a look back to '96 when AOL became one of the first ISP's to offer unlimited plans. It was a disaster for a short bit, but drove sales like mad. In short order the other ISP's followed suit. And while several have threatened to go back to a per minute charge, it has never happened and it is never going to happen. The first ISP to do it will see their customers desert them in droves. Even if all of the ISP's out there get together and decide that they will all go to a per minute charge, it just becomes one huge game of chicken with the first one to break the trust winning the top market position.
The genie is out of the bottle on unlimited data plans. AT&T was happy to help remove the stopper, they are just pissing and moaning now because they didn't expect such high user demand and it's expensive to play catch-up. While having the iPhone as an exclusive device might keep a few customers, if they follow through on this threat, it's still going to kill their wireless division.
Well if this story is to be believed then while Microsoft showed a 14% decline in year over year revenue for Q3 2009, the Entertainment and Devices Division (Xbox and Zune) showed roughly a doubling of profit from $159 million to $312 million. So, while we may never know if MS has recouped all of the money they sunk into getting into the console market, it looks like they are making money on it now; even with having to carry the albatross that is the Zune.
I think it has less to do with what phase you are in in life than what types of games you play.
While I do play both console games and PC games, the choice is usually dictated by what type of game I am buying. If I am looking for a Prince of Persia or God of War type game, I buy it on the console. Since I won't really need fine control with lots of buttons, the console works out great and the ability to just drop in the disc and play is nice. For FPS or other games where I want a fine level of control and a good array of buttons, give me a PC. For example, look at the progression of the Rainbow Six games. By the second game of the series, I had an amazing amount of control over my character. The third game simply added to that. When the fourth game was announced as a console only game, I and many other fans started whining. Unfortunately, UbiSoft decided to give us what we asked for and ported Rainbow Six: Lockdown over to the PC. The controls felt like a dumbed down version Doom. And the actual game play wasn't much better. The series went from a tactical shooter to a yet another run and gun fest.
As for the hassle of keeping a gaming PC running, it's really not that hard. Yes, I have seen my fair share of games which lock up or refuse to run, but they aren't that common. And the trade off is usually a community around a good game making maps and mods. Yes, paid for downloadable content can be nice, but the stuff some of the modders do can be as good as, and sometimes even better than, the original game which gives me a lot more bang for the buck.
The health care fiasco is in a defense appropriations bill.
I thought the health care fiasco was in the Health Care Fiasco bill which we've been hearing so much about in the news. Got any actual citations on health care stuff being pushed into the defense appropriations bill? Or is this just more Limbaugh/Beck bullshit?
Have you seen the latest on the Antarctic data adjustments? The data from 63 temp sensors was "homoginized" by simply discarding the data from 62 of them and replacing those 62 with the data from the sensor with the fastest warming, producing a rate of change 8 times what might be reasonable. Persumably the hot sensor is near Mt Erebus (Antarctica's active volcano). You can "prove" anything you want if you lie about the data.
Actually no, I haven't seen this, link please? I tried googling for it and apparently either my skills are lacking or an actual source for this is.
I'd take that bet, I'm figuring that it'll get attached to the defense spending bill which is still waiting to be passed for this year (or next year's, if it takes that long). The Republicans are going to fight anything which comes out of Copenhagen which isn't an obvious hand-out to the oil companies. On the other hand, they won't fight a defense spending bill even if it had a "we're going to kill babies and stick them on spikes" rider in it.
Sure, just make sure to run this as an administrator...link
2. Vista's UAC was a good idea, but they botched it badly. I can say this with some authority since I have been a long time Vista user.
Ya, I won't argue that it was way too needy. And I am glad that Windows 7 toned it down quite a bit. Still, it was a starting point and a good example of how people react to this sort of thing.
In the Pons and Fleischmann case, they were putting forth an experiment which, if it had actually worked, would have caused massive social upheaval as we changed over to a cold fusion based society. When their experiments proved to not be reproducible the status quo was maintained, and everyone got on with life. While it was important in the scientific community, for the average layperson it was a bunch of news about crap they didn't understand, didn't care about, and since it didn't effect them in the end, didn't need to care about.
In contrast, the scientists who are putting forth the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) are also stating that the only real solution is going to involve massive social uchange. In general, people don't like change. Worse yet, the AGW folks are asking people who have grown up with the mindset of consumerism and waste to give that up. Again, it should come as little surprise that people are resistant to this.
And then there is the politics behind how to deal with AGW. Deserved or not, the green movement managed to get itself linked with socialism, and because of poor education in the US, communism in the 1970's. And, unfortunately, most of the solutions to the AGW problem need to be on a massive scale, involving whole societies working together, in other words: socialism. And, all the opponents of change need to so is raise this specter and many people in the US will eat it up. Coupled with the natural resistance to change, and people will go through all sorts of mental contortions to not have to deal with it.
The next political problem is that the people with money in this country are willing to spend that money to protect their income. Since the current system is known to make them money and the new system is an unknown, but will likely involve higher costs without an obvious mechanism for higher profits, the safe bet is to fight to keep the current system in place. Moreover, some of the people with the most money, the folks who run the oil companies, can easily recognize that the proposed changes are a threat to their primary revenue stream. It's no wonder they throw tons of money into fighting the changes.
As for solutions, I don't think there is an easy way to deal with all of this. Trying to force the change to happen fast has the possibility of backfiring. In the US right now the current makeup of government (heavily Democrat) has the best chance of getting something done on the AGW issue. However, too much change at once will give the Republicans a lot of ammo to use in 2010 and 2012. If the current government tries to force the people of the US too far out of their comfort zone at once, they may well be tossed out in the next election cycle which will give the Republicans the ability to undo those changes, and even the blessing of the people to do so. Instead, the change is going to have to happen slowly and incrementally.
The problem here, of course, is that we may really need to get something done quickly. My opinion on this would be that we really need to look at geo-engineering solutions for the short term. Certainly, it's not an optimal solution, and there is the problem that we cannot guarantee that tinkering with the climate is going to work; but, we're doing that at the moment anyway. We are dumping tons of gasses into the atmosphere every day which we know modify how the climate reacts to solar inputs. While the best solution would be to stop doing that, that solution isn't really practicable. The political situation to get it done just isn't there at the moment, And, while we may be able to get that change to happen via small changes in the market economy, that is likely to be a slow and inaccurate solution. And yes, I do realize that if everyone would just consume a little less, drive a little less, and get out of their comfort zone, we wouldn't need to do this. Wonderful, great, ain't gonna happen. The "reduce, recycle, reuse" horse is dead, American consumerism killed it, so either fuck it or walk away, but please quit beating it.
Sounds great on paper, but given the way most users react to interruptions caused by security in systems, I'd give it about two iterations before most users would be googling how to turn it off. And even for those first two reports, I would expect the standard "blah blah, technical stuff...ignore it all, why is this bothering me?" response.
For a comparison, look at the response to Windows Vista's UAC. It's really a good idea on paper. Before anything gets Admin level rights, the user has to OK it. And, while it is technically possible to circumvent, there really is no need. Most users will simply click OK to everything; especially if it needed to open those naked pics of Anna Kornikova. Better yet, eventually, people will get so annoyed with those prompts that they will find a way to turn the security feature off.
WTF, over? 0.3% (I actually put the 0 out in front so someone wouldn't make this mistake) is 0.3%. As in three tenths of one percent. If you do the math of:
5,139 / 1,647,823
You get (roughly):
0.003119
Or, as I said, about 0.3%. Where is 30% coming from?
If we take 0.3% of the 15.9 million, we get 47,700. Which, I will grant if 47,700 people started shooting at each other I might finally get my bloody news clips. Of course, they would have been doing it over 22 years, so about 2,169 of them per year. I'd do better to go to a safe city, like Washington DC to look for crimes.
Also, if you look at the data I linked to, that 0.3% revocation rate is for any crime which disqualified a person to have a CCW. Of the 1,647,823 licenses issued only 167 were revoked due to a crime involving a firearm, or about (and I'll show my work this time for you):
167 / 1,647,823 = 0.000135 (rounded)
Or about 0.0135%
With a population of 15.9 million, that would be:
15,900,000 * 0.000135 = 2,147 (rounded)
Again, not really a rate at which we are going to have a state awash in blood.
So everyone cannot be trusted with guns, or freedom for that matter
US CODE: Title 10, Subtitle A, Part I, Chapter 13, SubSection 311:[1] (a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are—
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.
Ok, I'm male, over 17 years of age and under the age of 45, not part of the National Guard, and Section 313 of Title 32 doesn't apply to me (it actually applies to the National Guard) and I'm a US Citizen. That makes me part of the "unorganized militia". Now, where's my fucking M-16?
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I just don't see Google ever becoming an auto maker, that's so far removed from their core business.
Considering their re-organization into Alphabet Inc., they may well be considering pushing even further afield than they already have. Would that include a car division? Probably not, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they sought out an established partner; but, they have show a willingness to jump into markets with large, entrenched players (e.g.: Google Fiber).
Yay, Moral Relativism! So while we're agreeing to disagree, we'll just have to agree to disagree that it is wrong for me to drop by, tie you up, skull fuck you in both eye sockets and take all of your possessions. After all, I see nothing wrong with me doing any of that to you, so it's OK and we'll just agree to disagree.
And this would be why no sane society bases itself on Moral Relativism, it sounds fun right up until someone with weapons and organizational skills realizes that he can set himself up as a dictator, and does so. And then the anarchist utopia ends and we get Somalia. Paradoxically, in order for a free society to function you have to have good laws which don't leave things open to such ridiculous interpretation. While some of the lines are pretty easy to draw, I think we can all agree that skull fucking someone is not OK, others are going to be a little tougher. Unsurprisingly, in those gray areas people tend to disagree. At this point, the best solution for deciding those gray areas, which we have come up with, is to have democratically elected representatives argue it out and make a final rule. And, in order to keep our society out of the hell of anarchy, we all go along with it and work though the system to change things we don't like. I think I'll have to agree with Mr. Churchill on this one, "Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
So which one sounds better to you?
A society based on rules which keeps everyone mostly free but brings overwhelming force to bear to maintain an acceptable standard
Or
Anarchy and the possibility of a random guy dropping by to skull fuck you
I'm gonna stick with my laws, even if they are screwed up from time to time. At least I have the option to change them without a gunfight.
You can even keep a copy of it on a thumbdrive and run it from there without installing:
PortableApps Version
Also not affiliated with the project or the portable apps folks, just like both.
Dear UK, You should trust our files implicitly, but here's the hash anyway:
76D08CAB8B28C5F447D47519454F0D94
Yours sincerely,
The Netherlands
The Constitution puts limits on the actions of the government. Not 'the actions of the government within the borders of the admitted states.'
Just to nitpick, but it really is important because of the context. The Constitution does not place limits on the actions of the government. The US Constitution grants the government powers. The problem is that a number of people were worried that the government would work to grow those powers in an unbounded way and so they insisted on the Bill of Rights as an check on that behavior. The counter argument to the Bill of Rights was that it would eventually be turned around and used as an exhaustive list of the rights of the people and the limits of government power. The fact that many people today now believe that this is the case, and will state that "The Constitution puts limits on the actions of the government" shows that the detractors of the Bill of Rights were right. Technically, it was because of these fears that the Ninth and Tenth Amendments were added; however, FDR managed to murder the Ninth and the Tenth sort of withered away during the twentieth century.
Still, based on the (probably vain) hope that we might breath some life back into the Tenth, I tend to pick at this issue:
The US Constitution does not limit the power of US Government, it grants powers to the US Government. The US Government does not have any power not specifically granted to it by the US Constitution.
Ya, about that. The US average for solving murder cases is floating at about 60% [1] I'm not sure what is for theft, but given that fewer resources are brought to bear for a theft than a murder, I'm gonna guess that it's as bad or worse.
Doh! I meant to put RAID 1 and screwed it up.
Was gonna say the same thing. Get a cheap NAS, put the two drives in it, go with RAID 0.
The D-Link DNS-321 is $120 from Newegg. It runs Linux and can handle all your Web/FTP/Samba needs.
Spend some more time with it to learn the aliases; and try hitting every once in a while, it's kinda like having intellisense at the command line. As a system admin, I love powershell and am using it constantly. Granted, it does help that I'm on Exchange 2007 and we have a few Server 2008 boxes deployed. Also, what rabbit994 said is spot on for it's best usage, scripting. Sure, this is largely just MS copying the *nix shell, but it works well and having the .NET API exposed for scripting and command lines is very nice. Like rabbit994, I end up having to add chunks of users all at once (I'm in a University environment) each with a mailbox, a user folder, a web folder and an FTP folder; create the distribution group and security group for the new batch of students, add all of the students to said groups, add those groups to our higher level groups; oh, and while I'm at it make sure that all of the ACL's are correct for each of the student's folders. And, just for the fun of it, I like to keep each batch of students in their own OU in Active Directory, it makes applying group specific GPO's easier. It shouldn't be a big surprise that as a manual process this takes anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes per student. With powershell, I run a script on my laptop which consumes a CSV file of student names and a command line parameter for the group number and within seconds all of that is done for all of the students.
As for it not being on any system I sit down on, that does suck. However, what did you expect MS to do make it a critical patch for all systems? On the other hand, we'll eventually get to that point anyway. Powershell is bundled with Windows 7 and Server 2008. While some folks may hang on to XP until they die, most of us (especially businesses) will upgrade and this problem will simply disappear.
Also on the nuke idea, why limit the choice between kinetic and nuclear weapons to either/or? Take the same type of tech we are currently using for the BLU-116 Bunker Buster bomb, add engines, an optic guidance system and replace the chemical explosive warhead with a nuclear warhead. Scale as needed. It would make the lake of an atmosphere outside the ship a plus.
Sure, I would expect counter measures on large scale warships, but we have that now and weapons like this can still get through and hit their target, why do we expect that to change?
That's another one of the things which I think could help our current situation in the US for a number of markets. Disallow vertical integration in communications. For example, if you are providing communications services you cannot own the network and vice versa; nor can one parent company hold one of each. This would include phone, internet and TV. AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, etc. would be broken up into different companies. One would be a network provider which just sells access to the network and the other would be the service provider who buys access to the network and resells it to the customers. The network companies would then become similar to other public utilities which are private companies given exclusive monopolies in a region in exchange for government oversight.
The spectrum is auctioned off the highest bidder. For a few billion dollars the entrenched interests can just gobble it all up regardless of whether or not they need it or intend to deploy on it.
This has always been one of my biggest complaints about the FCC's wireless spectrum auctions. There really needs to be a use requirement attached to the sale. For example, anytime a company/individual purchases a chunk of spectrum, there are required to put it to use. If they don't utilize it or under-utilize* it it gets taken back from them (no refunds) and then re-auctioned.
* - Under utilization would cover buying a chunk of spectrum which can carry far more information on it than a company does regularly. In which case, that chunk should be stripped from them and a less valuable one given for their current use. This is to avoid the purchase of a valuable chunk and then using it to send control messages or the like to avoid it appearing unused.
You realise other networks are likely to follow suit?
I doubt it, it only takes one carrier to realize that they can pickup a ton of customers by offering an unlimited plan. They will simply need to figure out the price point at which it works for them financially, and get ready to deal with being crushed under the rush of customers. Take a look back to '96 when AOL became one of the first ISP's to offer unlimited plans. It was a disaster for a short bit, but drove sales like mad. In short order the other ISP's followed suit. And while several have threatened to go back to a per minute charge, it has never happened and it is never going to happen. The first ISP to do it will see their customers desert them in droves. Even if all of the ISP's out there get together and decide that they will all go to a per minute charge, it just becomes one huge game of chicken with the first one to break the trust winning the top market position.
The genie is out of the bottle on unlimited data plans. AT&T was happy to help remove the stopper, they are just pissing and moaning now because they didn't expect such high user demand and it's expensive to play catch-up. While having the iPhone as an exclusive device might keep a few customers, if they follow through on this threat, it's still going to kill their wireless division.
Yes, but fortunately, it's dying.
Well if this story is to be believed then while Microsoft showed a 14% decline in year over year revenue for Q3 2009, the Entertainment and Devices Division (Xbox and Zune) showed roughly a doubling of profit from $159 million to $312 million. So, while we may never know if MS has recouped all of the money they sunk into getting into the console market, it looks like they are making money on it now; even with having to carry the albatross that is the Zune.
I think it has less to do with what phase you are in in life than what types of games you play.
While I do play both console games and PC games, the choice is usually dictated by what type of game I am buying. If I am looking for a Prince of Persia or God of War type game, I buy it on the console. Since I won't really need fine control with lots of buttons, the console works out great and the ability to just drop in the disc and play is nice. For FPS or other games where I want a fine level of control and a good array of buttons, give me a PC. For example, look at the progression of the Rainbow Six games. By the second game of the series, I had an amazing amount of control over my character. The third game simply added to that. When the fourth game was announced as a console only game, I and many other fans started whining. Unfortunately, UbiSoft decided to give us what we asked for and ported Rainbow Six: Lockdown over to the PC. The controls felt like a dumbed down version Doom. And the actual game play wasn't much better. The series went from a tactical shooter to a yet another run and gun fest.
As for the hassle of keeping a gaming PC running, it's really not that hard. Yes, I have seen my fair share of games which lock up or refuse to run, but they aren't that common. And the trade off is usually a community around a good game making maps and mods. Yes, paid for downloadable content can be nice, but the stuff some of the modders do can be as good as, and sometimes even better than, the original game which gives me a lot more bang for the buck.
The health care fiasco is in a defense appropriations bill.
I thought the health care fiasco was in the Health Care Fiasco bill which we've been hearing so much about in the news. Got any actual citations on health care stuff being pushed into the defense appropriations bill? Or is this just more Limbaugh/Beck bullshit?
Have you seen the latest on the Antarctic data adjustments? The data from 63 temp sensors was "homoginized" by simply discarding the data from 62 of them and replacing those 62 with the data from the sensor with the fastest warming, producing a rate of change 8 times what might be reasonable. Persumably the hot sensor is near Mt Erebus (Antarctica's active volcano). You can "prove" anything you want if you lie about the data.
Actually no, I haven't seen this, link please? I tried googling for it and apparently either my skills are lacking or an actual source for this is.
I'd take that bet, I'm figuring that it'll get attached to the defense spending bill which is still waiting to be passed for this year (or next year's, if it takes that long). The Republicans are going to fight anything which comes out of Copenhagen which isn't an obvious hand-out to the oil companies. On the other hand, they won't fight a defense spending bill even if it had a "we're going to kill babies and stick them on spikes" rider in it.
1. Anna Kornikova naked? Links plz.
Sure, just make sure to run this as an administrator...link
2. Vista's UAC was a good idea, but they botched it badly. I can say this with some authority since I have been a long time Vista user.
Ya, I won't argue that it was way too needy. And I am glad that Windows 7 toned it down quite a bit. Still, it was a starting point and a good example of how people react to this sort of thing.
There are a couple key differences here through.
In the Pons and Fleischmann case, they were putting forth an experiment which, if it had actually worked, would have caused massive social upheaval as we changed over to a cold fusion based society. When their experiments proved to not be reproducible the status quo was maintained, and everyone got on with life. While it was important in the scientific community, for the average layperson it was a bunch of news about crap they didn't understand, didn't care about, and since it didn't effect them in the end, didn't need to care about.
In contrast, the scientists who are putting forth the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) are also stating that the only real solution is going to involve massive social uchange. In general, people don't like change. Worse yet, the AGW folks are asking people who have grown up with the mindset of consumerism and waste to give that up. Again, it should come as little surprise that people are resistant to this.
And then there is the politics behind how to deal with AGW. Deserved or not, the green movement managed to get itself linked with socialism, and because of poor education in the US, communism in the 1970's. And, unfortunately, most of the solutions to the AGW problem need to be on a massive scale, involving whole societies working together, in other words: socialism. And, all the opponents of change need to so is raise this specter and many people in the US will eat it up. Coupled with the natural resistance to change, and people will go through all sorts of mental contortions to not have to deal with it.
The next political problem is that the people with money in this country are willing to spend that money to protect their income. Since the current system is known to make them money and the new system is an unknown, but will likely involve higher costs without an obvious mechanism for higher profits, the safe bet is to fight to keep the current system in place. Moreover, some of the people with the most money, the folks who run the oil companies, can easily recognize that the proposed changes are a threat to their primary revenue stream. It's no wonder they throw tons of money into fighting the changes.
As for solutions, I don't think there is an easy way to deal with all of this. Trying to force the change to happen fast has the possibility of backfiring. In the US right now the current makeup of government (heavily Democrat) has the best chance of getting something done on the AGW issue. However, too much change at once will give the Republicans a lot of ammo to use in 2010 and 2012. If the current government tries to force the people of the US too far out of their comfort zone at once, they may well be tossed out in the next election cycle which will give the Republicans the ability to undo those changes, and even the blessing of the people to do so. Instead, the change is going to have to happen slowly and incrementally.
The problem here, of course, is that we may really need to get something done quickly. My opinion on this would be that we really need to look at geo-engineering solutions for the short term. Certainly, it's not an optimal solution, and there is the problem that we cannot guarantee that tinkering with the climate is going to work; but, we're doing that at the moment anyway. We are dumping tons of gasses into the atmosphere every day which we know modify how the climate reacts to solar inputs. While the best solution would be to stop doing that, that solution isn't really practicable. The political situation to get it done just isn't there at the moment, And, while we may be able to get that change to happen via small changes in the market economy, that is likely to be a slow and inaccurate solution. And yes, I do realize that if everyone would just consume a little less, drive a little less, and get out of their comfort zone, we wouldn't need to do this. Wonderful, great, ain't gonna happen. The "reduce, recycle, reuse" horse is dead, American consumerism killed it, so either fuck it or walk away, but please quit beating it.
Sounds great on paper, but given the way most users react to interruptions caused by security in systems, I'd give it about two iterations before most users would be googling how to turn it off. And even for those first two reports, I would expect the standard "blah blah, technical stuff...ignore it all, why is this bothering me?" response.
For a comparison, look at the response to Windows Vista's UAC. It's really a good idea on paper. Before anything gets Admin level rights, the user has to OK it. And, while it is technically possible to circumvent, there really is no need. Most users will simply click OK to everything; especially if it needed to open those naked pics of Anna Kornikova. Better yet, eventually, people will get so annoyed with those prompts that they will find a way to turn the security feature off.
Dammit, who check the AC box for me? That's me above.
Oops, I went off half-cocked, I saw your first response and went typing without seeing the correction. Please ignore my previous snark above.
But, let's apply that 0.3% (which is 30%)
WTF, over? 0.3% (I actually put the 0 out in front so someone wouldn't make this mistake) is 0.3%. As in three tenths of one percent. If you do the math of:
5,139 / 1,647,823
You get (roughly):
0.003119
Or, as I said, about 0.3%. Where is 30% coming from?
If we take 0.3% of the 15.9 million, we get 47,700. Which, I will grant if 47,700 people started shooting at each other I might finally get my bloody news clips. Of course, they would have been doing it over 22 years, so about 2,169 of them per year. I'd do better to go to a safe city, like Washington DC to look for crimes.
Also, if you look at the data I linked to, that 0.3% revocation rate is for any crime which disqualified a person to have a CCW. Of the 1,647,823 licenses issued only 167 were revoked due to a crime involving a firearm, or about (and I'll show my work this time for you):
167 / 1,647,823 = 0.000135 (rounded)
Or about 0.0135%
With a population of 15.9 million, that would be:
15,900,000 * 0.000135 = 2,147 (rounded)
Again, not really a rate at which we are going to have a state awash in blood.
So everyone cannot be trusted with guns, or freedom for that matter
Wait, did I just get trolled?
US CODE: Title 10, Subtitle A, Part I, Chapter 13, SubSection 311:[1]
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are—
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.
Ok, I'm male, over 17 years of age and under the age of 45, not part of the National Guard, and Section 313 of Title 32 doesn't apply to me (it actually applies to the National Guard) and I'm a US Citizen. That makes me part of the "unorganized militia". Now, where's my fucking M-16?