Having relatively easy access to water makes long term habitation much more possible, the two deficiencies you mention are solvable.
Sufficient Atmosphere - ummmmm
Breathable gases can probably be harvested from the Martian soil. The primary thing is oxygen, and that is plentiful, if a bit bound up at the moment, on Mars. At best, the soil should have iron oxides which could be harvested, at worst we would have to crack it out of the water.
Sufficient Magnetosphere - uh oh
Not really that big of a problem. While the solar wind would bake an exposed human like a pop-tart, the required shielding isn't that hard to make. Also, there may be parts of Mars which have small pockets of magnetic protection [1]. It won't help with the atmosphere problem, but it will keep a human from being baked.
The real problem is going to be power. Solar is an option, but with the dust storms this probably won't work. Fossil fuels are a no go for the same reason local water is so important: getting it there takes way too much energy. That pretty much leaves the nuclear option. And even this has the problem of having to transport the fuel; granted with a good IFR reactor the amount of fuel needed could be significantly reduced, but that fuel would still need to be transported.
So, really, the remaining hurdle is figuring out a good way to power the whole thing. Any such setup is going to consume energy like an American at a Vegas buffet, and that is going to be very difficult and costly to transport, if we can't find it locally.
What a load of nonsense.
1. Download and boot Knoppix
2. From a root terminal run: shred -vfz -n 25/dev/hda
Granted, if it's data I'm paranoid about (financial data) and I don't plan to re-use the hard drive, I'll do the above followed by disassembling the hard drive (with actual screwdrivers, not a hammer) extract the patters and then punch 7.62mm holes in them from 100 yards over the course of a few hours.
Ya, when you absolutely, positively, need to be sure, nothing beats thorough physical destruction (where'd my thermite go?). However, having every bit randomly written 25 times, followed by every bit being zeroed if probably good enough.
California, where the only thing not regulated are our regulators.
Honestly though, this isn't that bad. Energy efficiency is not really a selling point for most consumer electronics, so expecting it to be pushed for by the manufacturers is kind of silly. Placing blanket requirements on what can be sold is one of the few ways to force it to happen, without favoring any one manufacturer.
That said, with the brilliance of our legislators here in CA, I expect that the next step will be for them to outlaw the ownership of a TV with too great a contrast ratio, and which displays a color temperature other than 7300k. Oh, and they won't grandfather old TVs either, so you become a criminal by doing nothing.
The parent said that "our civil rights are exploited," and the entire premise behind the Speed Camera Program is called into question as a result of the growing this fad among students.
Well, I guess this is one way to wake people up to the problems inherent in this.
Seems like the logical next step would be to start duplicating the license plates of city mayors, town councilmen, etc. and see if you can't bury them in a wave of bogus tickets. Not that I would advocate people engage in crimes, but it would be damn funny.
Actually, she agrees with you, and she makes a good point about it. It's necessary, but it does bring with it a bunch of problems.
It's really a problem with freedom and rights in general. There are those who will abuse them; however, it is far better to have those freedoms and rights and accept that they will be abused and that we will have to deal with the abuses, than to restrict everything.
Do read fiction, watch movies or TV?
If the answer to any of those questions is 'yes', turn the question you asked back around on yourself and find the answer, once you do, you will hopefully understand why I sink several hours a week into WoW.
All entertainment is escapism. You can sit here and pontificate about the "benefits" of your chosen version of it, but in the end it's just escapism. Your version may be escaping into a fake story written on paper, or a fake story played out for you by actors in front of a camera. You might even find your escape from the world in playing a musical instrument. But, unless you are making a living at it, it is still just escapism.
For some reason humans seem to have a need to break away for a while and play. To let their mind relax and just do something because they enjoy doing it. Doing so is beneficial in a lot of ways. What each of us find relaxing and enjoyable varies from person to person, and trying to explain why I like something is about as useful as trying to nail jello to a wall.
I enjoy exploring the world, reading the stories and the social interaction. Why? Fuck me if I know, it's just what I like. Same reason I like blue, I guess.
I can see one hole in leatherworking, which is rather annoying. The set items which I make are usually replaced at a rate faster than they can be used.
For example, early in the new content a leatherworker can create several different leather and mail sets. In order for a character to use all of the pieces of those sets, he needs to be level 74 (Example: Iceborne Helm). By that level, you have probably already spent some time in instances and hopefully won a few gear drops, which replace those set pieces. It's quite possible to be putting together such a set, only to have a piece, which you can't even wear yet, already outclassed by something you picked up off a boss, which you can wear.
It's not that I would want to see the drops get nerfed, but it would be nice for those set items to become usable sooner. Granted, this is not a new problem to WotLK, but it is still a problem which would be nice to see addressed.
I'd play a murloc. Sure they are annoying to fight because pulling one usually results in pulling half the beach, but they are still just all kinds of neat.
Hell, my wife actually has the murloc sound as the ringtone on her phone.
Yup, both the Electoral College and the Right to Bear Arms have been around a long time; the former for 200-odd years, the later goes back a further than that. So what? It's old throw it out? Do you actually have a real argument, or do you just dislike the dusty smell?
1) Free healthcare at the point of treatment (viewed as a human rights violation in most of the civilised world)
I find it funny that this is brought up over and over again, and it's actually wrong. The US Federal Government passed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act in 1986. If a person is having a medical problem, they can walk into an Emergency Room and they will be treated regardless of their ability to pay.
Now, the one thing this doesn't do is cover routine medical care, which might be cheaper in the long run. However, the US doesn't exactly toss dying people into the streets as you seem to be implying.
As for the viewed as a human rights violation in most of the civilised world. So what? Ever hear of the logical fallacy "appeal to authority" a subset of which is often called "appeal to consensus"? Back to the question I asked above, do you have a real argument?
2) Loser pays court system (people can't afford to defend themselves against legal bullies - you win, you still lose)
I'll go with you on this one being a problem we need to fix. It's unfortunate that Tort Reform has fallen out of vogue in recent years. I had hoped that we could move to a system which socialized the legal system and allowed for the poor to be able to effectively fight a much richer opponent, and prevent the rich from winning via exhaustion.
Unfortunately, this is going to be a very difficult and costly overhaul, and is not something we should rush into. How do we balance the desire to let someone bring suit, and perform a reasonable discovery, without sinking tons of money into publicly funded fishing expeditions? This is probably going to involve filtering what types of suits can be brought and some sort of rubric for allocating resources to cases for discovery. I personally don't have a good answer for this, and I don't have as much time to think about it, or the training to think about it effectively, which many of the people who have looked into it do.
I agree, it's a problem, but not one worth tossing the whole US system of government out over. Heck, it's probably not going to even require a Constitutional change, just changes to normal Tort law.
3) Equal access to the media for ALL political parties during an election (stops there being an advantage based on wealth)
And how do you propose to do this? Require that all forms of media give a certain amount of time and space to all candidates? What if I want to say more as a candidate, am I not allowed to say more? What happens to a news program which happens to report on something which involves me but not another candidate? In other words, how do you plan to do this without strangling free political speech in the process?
It's a nice, pretty, egalitarian idea. Unfortunately, while it looks nice on paper, implementing it is fraught with way too many problems. The current system of staying out of the way and letting all sides buy whatever coverage they can afford doesn't restrict anyone, though I agree that the better financed candidates can drown out the worse financed ones. This isn't ideal, but it doesn't create the sticky problems of government censorship which the "Equal Access for All" idea is going to run into.
But hell, isn't Free Speech an archaic idea as well? After all, it's also been in place in the US for the past 200-odd years. Out with the old, in with the new.
The US system is far from perfect, but let's not pretend it's anywhere near the worst.
As has been said repeatedly, do not go in for age questions. That's a lawsuit waiting to happen.
First and foremost, you need to define the job you are hiring for. For example, looking at all the responses on here, it would seem that the average response assumed that you were hiring a programmer. Since you said "IT", I'm guessing you're actually looking for either a systems manager or tech. But you need to know that is what you are hiring.
If you haven't done so yet, sit down and write up a detailed job description. List all of the duties expected of that position and the competencies required. Will this person be actually working on servers, workstations? Will they only be handling one area? Will they be a manager, and not expected to do the actual work themselves?
If you can't do that, you're already in trouble. You need to know what you are looking for before you will find it. You might go through the hiring process and find the best programmer in the world, who can write code to make a computer sit up and dance. The problem is, if you need someone to run and maintain your email system, that coder is probably not the best choice.
Once you have done your job and determined what it is you are hiring for, then start looking at the type of work that person will be doing. that should lead you to some questions which will determine whether or not they are knowledgeable. From there, ask them about their successes and failures. Give them some scenarios and see how they work through them.
But, if you value your company, do not ask any questions about age/sex/religion.
I also like the theory of the registry. All configuration held in a single, easy to access place with a consistent interface.
Unfortunately, in practice, it's a mess. Though, I really don't think the fault is entirely MS's. As you stated, too many developers simply dumped stuff in HKLM. The problem is, there is nothing in the design of the registry to stop that and it even encourages it. There is really no easy way to have a configuration in HKCU for one user replicate across all users for a system (the default user is only replicated when a new profile is created). On the other hand, HKLM is the same for all users.
This is actually one of the places where I really thought a Vista feature was great: Registry Virtualization. Virtualize out writes to system locations in the registry on a per-user basis. Unfortunately, it's not as comprehensive as that, and MS plans to deprecate it in the future.
Sure there is, it's a security blanket and all knowing authority. The fact is, at some point in your life, you will die. From a purely reasonable perspective this is a terrifying prospect, as it would entail the death of personality. Science has shown no evidence of an afterlife or anything other than decomposition postmortem. A belief in a religion usually brings with it some sort afterlife, some sort of continuation of consciousness, if not identity. It provides a reason to actually try to be moral in this life, other then avoiding societal punishment.
Religion is a way to coax people into being good, even when they know they would not get caught. And for them to have a way to deal with death. Reason and logic cannot provide either of those.
Seriously, give me a purely logical reason to not commit a crime for which you know you will not be caught. Without some sort of expectation of punishment, morality breaks down.
if there were places that reason could not go, reason would not discover it, because these places do not exist.
Ok, now you're just getting circular. A blind man could not discover 'red' either, that does not prove it does not exist. Only that he is incapable of detecting it.
If they did exist, they would have to have a "footprint" of some sort or another where they connect with the rest of the universe, including the parts we know, as everything within the (or at least "this") universe are interactively connected by causality.
Now you're really getting circular. You're taking the assumption that all places are detectable by reason, therefore any place which exists, even if undetectable by reason as a given, must be detectable by reason and therefore cannot exist.
The problem there is that faith, being non-reason by definition, essentially randomizes the content of one's mind -- roll the dice enough, and that "die, heretic" combination is all but certain to come up, given enough time. As evidence: holy wars were the rule until the secular Enlightenment forced the Christians to straighten up, fly right, and constrain their faith within the bounds of something greater: reason.
So, the answer is what then? Soviet style suppression of religion? That wasn't exactly puppy dogs and roses. Perhaps we should follow in the steps of Mao and his Great Leap Forward and round up, torture and execute Buddhists? If we're going to dredge up history, Marxism-Leninism has quite a bit to answer for as well. Reason is all good and well, as long as it has some moral counterpoint to it to prevent it from falling into any number of traps with the various moral theories in philosophy (ever consider the end result of taking utilitarianism to it's ultimate extreme? Let's cut up one healthy person to save ten people with his organs). This is where a religion provides a ready made moral framework. Yes, some religions have problems and we would certainly do well to abandon much of the trappings, but for many people it's just what they need to keep them going in the right direction.
That's because you want to avoid all conflict and pretend there is none. You'll squint and wave your hands to get around it, and call those "extremists" when they don't accept your hand waving.
Really? You might want to get your crystal ball checked out, it's giving you false readings. As you mentioned later, I do:
com[e] from a modern, multicultural, liberal view of religion.
And because of that, I am willing to accept that we don't need to force anyone to believe or not believe anything as long as (as I said previously): they aren't forcing that belief on others. Or trying to harm others who disagree with them.
Amazingly enough, our current world if full of people who believe in some form of an invisible sky wizard and they aren't out killing each other. Ya know, the millions of Christians in the US, Canada and Europe. The billions of Hindus in India and Pakistan. If anything, the middle of the bell curve seems to be willing to live and let live. Which means it's only the extremities which are violent. Good thing too, imagine having a billion or so people who really want to kill over religion.
You think there's "no harm" in teaching people to accept bullshit and argument by authority?
Certainly there is a problem with teaching people to accept arguments based on an appeal to authority. That is why it needs to be counterbalanced with a good grounding in critical thinking. However, to demand that someone not teach their child their religion is just as tyrannical as trying to force people into one. Or are we going to follow the Soviet route and start hunting down and killing priests? Atheism has had it's extremists too, and they were just as bad. It has more to do with humans being bastards than the religion they pick.
What do you say to a Muslim who says "It's right there in the Koran, somebody who leaves the religion must be killed."?
Going back to what I originally posted: As long as they aren't forcing that belief on others. Or trying to harm others who disagree with them.
I've never understood why many people can't accept the co-existence of science and religion. They do not have to be mutually exclusive, it's just the extremists on both sides which create the problem.
Take Christianity and The Big Bang theroy. They work out just fine, so long as the Christian can accept that the Bible may not be a 100% accurate portrayal of how God did it. And the science side doesn't get up in arms with the idea that god wrote the laws of the universe. You know, maybe he dumbed it down a bit so that his bronze age audience could understand it.
My usual view of it is about: God: In the beginning there was nothing, not time, not space, truly absolutely nothing. Well, the quiet was nice, but it got boring fast. So, I figured I would write up the basic laws to run a universe, kick start it and see what that got me. Abraham: Nothing, Universal Laws, kick start, got it. But what do you mean by "no time", how can you have no time? God: Just go with me on that one, you'll figure it out later. Abraham:OK. God:So, the Universe exploded into existence, as it expanded a high energy plasma began to condense down into quarks, anti-quarks and a whole host of other sub-atomic particles. And it was truly chaos. Particles and their anti-particles were colliding and mutually an... Yes, what it is Abraham, why are you raising your hand, do you need to pee? Abraham: Um, I think you lost me at about "Plasma", and I know what a "cork" is, but what's and "anti-cork", it is some kind of spout? God: Oh right, a few thousands years early on those, aren't I? Um, how are you with Calculus? Abraham: Calcu-what? God: Non-euclidean algebra? Abraham:... God: Right, fuck it. New clay tablet. In the beginning I said, "Let there be light!" and there was, and it was good. Still with me?
You know, maybe the Bible/Koran/Torah aren't really literal versions of what happened. Maybe they are just metaphors which worked for early man, and God hasn't bothered to update them.
And no matter how fun it is to pick on religious folk, there is really no harm in them believing that there is an invisible sky wizard behind everything. As long as they aren't forcing that belief on others. Or trying to harm others who disagree with them.
You are correct. This is not a new idea, nor even experiment. People have been trying to recreate life from the conditions on earth for a very long time.
ALL HAVE FAILED.
or,
ALL HAVE HAD TOO SHORT OF RUN TIME.
Seriously, these samples were created in a lab, dried, and then left to rot for 60 years. And they still show signs of amino acids. Which means that they are at least somewhat stable. All we need to do now is dump them in an early ocean like environment and watch them for a few million years and see if anything interesting happens.
That's one of the problems with testing evolution, it takes a really long time.
I doubt I am the norm, but I have always viewed my "ownership" of in game items as more akin to a rental than a lease/mortgage/etc. I rent the apartment I live in, and while in good standing I have exclusive rights to use that property within certain limitations agreed upon between myself and the owners. Were I to stop paying rent, I would be kicked out.
One of the options I had, at the time the agreement was made, was to enter into a second agreement to rent a refrigerator. Had I done so, I would not have expected to take said refrigerator with me when I left. I declined, and instead purchased my own, which I expect to take with me when I leave.
In-game "property" (Second Life's agreement not withstanding) is rented property. The fact that, in order to access it, I am required to operate within the rules of the game to obtain it is immaterial. It's the same as the 'fridge. Unlike my apartment; however, I am not allowed to bring my "equipment" into the virtual world (Second Life excepted again). Much as my apartment complex has units with already existing refrigerators, and renters of those units cannot replace them with their own (not sure how the rental cost on those worked).
MMO's are pretty much rental agreements. You are paying a monthly fee for access to their servers, the reason it's worth the money to so many people is that the servers these companies operate have a really fun set of toys to play with, and a good set of rules for making the game fun. Part of the rules is the persistence of game state from day to day.
The fact that police officers are known to abuse this type of thing is now "good" because it shows that there is no such thing as complete privacy? Do you have idea the amount of damage that this type of abuse can cause to a single person or a whole society? The police decide that you are an undesirable and just start pulling tapes on you until the find enough dirt to either throw you in jail or publicly humiliate you to the point that you are unable to do anything.
Want to eliminate an unpopular group? No problem, just start pulling tapes on a known member and create a nice web of everyone linked to that person. And then go out and either pick them all up, or as above just keep working to commit character assassination.
It only becomes a very tiny, and easy step from police harassment of people they don't like to the suppression of dissent. Got a group which is causing trouble? No problem, create the web of association, and then start picking them up on trumped up charges.
Could this be done without the video surveillance system? Certainly, but it requires a difference of effort several orders of magnitude larger. For a great example spend some time reading about the Stasi (Wikipedia link to get you started). They had almost this level of surveillance in East Germany, and were amazingly effective in hunting down political dissent and changing the dissenter's minds (most often into compost).
If you can find me some sort of system which makes the step from finding stolen cars to finding people we don't like impossible, via a physical law or other universal law; I'll happily sign on. Until then, I'm willing to accept that some people will abuse their freedoms, and that law abiding citizens will need to always be willing and able to protect themselves and others.
I think the police in CA also treat it as a: don't really care, unless we're looking for reason to pull you over, infraction. If they are looking for a car similar to yours, they'll nail you for it so that they can look you over and tick another number off their quota in the deal.
It's much the same as the hangy things on the rear-view mirror. Technically, you're not supposed to have them; I've yet to meet anyone ticked for it. It's left to the officer to determine if it obstructs the drivers view through the windshield. In other words, if the officers wants to dick with you.
Wow, it never ceases to amaze me the power that:
ZOMG, NUKULAR!!1one1!!
Has in our government. Just reading that explanation of the IFR and what it could have meant is truly saddening.
My question would be, once they discover the cause, can we use that information? First application that comes to mind that I'd love to see is, if we can shorten something's half-life,
That was my first thought. Assuming it's something we can control easily and can happen at a usable level; this could be a boon for radioactive waste disposal.
For things like Sr-90 and the like which are radioactive enough to cause problems for the next few hundred years, it would be great to be able to force them down to a stable form quickly. I also wonder if in doing so we could setup an over-sized RTG and capture the resulting heat as useful energy. The big thing is going to be how much energy does the speed up process takes?
It's a good start, but it seems that it hasn't been working. If Best Western can manage to have info on 8 million credit cards on a laptop not encrypted, the system's broke. Companies dealing with CC data, and especially Social Security data should be downright paranoid about losing it. And that won't happen until the danger of punishment for losing it is far higher than the cost of securing it.
Like most things in the business world, it comes down to a cost/benefit analysis. If a CTO looks at the cost of securing their system, and sees a large number; and conversely looks as the possible cost of a security breach and sees a small number; they will never secure the system. So, we have to change the equation. Make it such that when they look at the possible cost of a breach the number is in the ridiculous range. Jail time would just be icing on the cake.
Slashdot Mirror
How about a cigarette then?
Having relatively easy access to water makes long term habitation much more possible, the two deficiencies you mention are solvable.
Sufficient Atmosphere - ummmmm
Breathable gases can probably be harvested from the Martian soil. The primary thing is oxygen, and that is plentiful, if a bit bound up at the moment, on Mars. At best, the soil should have iron oxides which could be harvested, at worst we would have to crack it out of the water.
Sufficient Magnetosphere - uh oh
Not really that big of a problem. While the solar wind would bake an exposed human like a pop-tart, the required shielding isn't that hard to make. Also, there may be parts of Mars which have small pockets of magnetic protection [1]. It won't help with the atmosphere problem, but it will keep a human from being baked.
The real problem is going to be power. Solar is an option, but with the dust storms this probably won't work. Fossil fuels are a no go for the same reason local water is so important: getting it there takes way too much energy. That pretty much leaves the nuclear option. And even this has the problem of having to transport the fuel; granted with a good IFR reactor the amount of fuel needed could be significantly reduced, but that fuel would still need to be transported.
So, really, the remaining hurdle is figuring out a good way to power the whole thing. Any such setup is going to consume energy like an American at a Vegas buffet, and that is going to be very difficult and costly to transport, if we can't find it locally.
What a load of nonsense. /dev/hda
1. Download and boot Knoppix
2. From a root terminal run: shred -vfz -n 25
Granted, if it's data I'm paranoid about (financial data) and I don't plan to re-use the hard drive, I'll do the above followed by disassembling the hard drive (with actual screwdrivers, not a hammer) extract the patters and then punch 7.62mm holes in them from 100 yards over the course of a few hours.
Ya, when you absolutely, positively, need to be sure, nothing beats thorough physical destruction (where'd my thermite go?). However, having every bit randomly written 25 times, followed by every bit being zeroed if probably good enough.
California, where the only thing not regulated are our regulators.
Honestly though, this isn't that bad. Energy efficiency is not really a selling point for most consumer electronics, so expecting it to be pushed for by the manufacturers is kind of silly. Placing blanket requirements on what can be sold is one of the few ways to force it to happen, without favoring any one manufacturer.
That said, with the brilliance of our legislators here in CA, I expect that the next step will be for them to outlaw the ownership of a TV with too great a contrast ratio, and which displays a color temperature other than 7300k. Oh, and they won't grandfather old TVs either, so you become a criminal by doing nothing.
The parent said that "our civil rights are exploited," and the entire premise behind the Speed Camera Program is called into question as a result of the growing this fad among students.
Well, I guess this is one way to wake people up to the problems inherent in this.
Seems like the logical next step would be to start duplicating the license plates of city mayors, town councilmen, etc. and see if you can't bury them in a wave of bogus tickets. Not that I would advocate people engage in crimes, but it would be damn funny.
Actually, she agrees with you, and she makes a good point about it. It's necessary, but it does bring with it a bunch of problems.
It's really a problem with freedom and rights in general. There are those who will abuse them; however, it is far better to have those freedoms and rights and accept that they will be abused and that we will have to deal with the abuses, than to restrict everything.
Do read fiction, watch movies or TV?
If the answer to any of those questions is 'yes', turn the question you asked back around on yourself and find the answer, once you do, you will hopefully understand why I sink several hours a week into WoW.
All entertainment is escapism. You can sit here and pontificate about the "benefits" of your chosen version of it, but in the end it's just escapism. Your version may be escaping into a fake story written on paper, or a fake story played out for you by actors in front of a camera. You might even find your escape from the world in playing a musical instrument. But, unless you are making a living at it, it is still just escapism.
For some reason humans seem to have a need to break away for a while and play. To let their mind relax and just do something because they enjoy doing it. Doing so is beneficial in a lot of ways. What each of us find relaxing and enjoyable varies from person to person, and trying to explain why I like something is about as useful as trying to nail jello to a wall.
I enjoy exploring the world, reading the stories and the social interaction. Why? Fuck me if I know, it's just what I like. Same reason I like blue, I guess.
I can see one hole in leatherworking, which is rather annoying. The set items which I make are usually replaced at a rate faster than they can be used.
For example, early in the new content a leatherworker can create several different leather and mail sets. In order for a character to use all of the pieces of those sets, he needs to be level 74 (Example: Iceborne Helm). By that level, you have probably already spent some time in instances and hopefully won a few gear drops, which replace those set pieces. It's quite possible to be putting together such a set, only to have a piece, which you can't even wear yet, already outclassed by something you picked up off a boss, which you can wear.
It's not that I would want to see the drops get nerfed, but it would be nice for those set items to become usable sooner. Granted, this is not a new problem to WotLK, but it is still a problem which would be nice to see addressed.
I'd play a murloc. Sure they are annoying to fight because pulling one usually results in pulling half the beach, but they are still just all kinds of neat.
Hell, my wife actually has the murloc sound as the ringtone on her phone.
Yup, both the Electoral College and the Right to Bear Arms have been around a long time; the former for 200-odd years, the later goes back a further than that. So what? It's old throw it out? Do you actually have a real argument, or do you just dislike the dusty smell?
1) Free healthcare at the point of treatment (viewed as a human rights violation in most of the civilised world)
I find it funny that this is brought up over and over again, and it's actually wrong. The US Federal Government passed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act in 1986. If a person is having a medical problem, they can walk into an Emergency Room and they will be treated regardless of their ability to pay.
Now, the one thing this doesn't do is cover routine medical care, which might be cheaper in the long run. However, the US doesn't exactly toss dying people into the streets as you seem to be implying.
As for the viewed as a human rights violation in most of the civilised world. So what? Ever hear of the logical fallacy "appeal to authority" a subset of which is often called "appeal to consensus"? Back to the question I asked above, do you have a real argument?
2) Loser pays court system (people can't afford to defend themselves against legal bullies - you win, you still lose)
I'll go with you on this one being a problem we need to fix. It's unfortunate that Tort Reform has fallen out of vogue in recent years. I had hoped that we could move to a system which socialized the legal system and allowed for the poor to be able to effectively fight a much richer opponent, and prevent the rich from winning via exhaustion.
Unfortunately, this is going to be a very difficult and costly overhaul, and is not something we should rush into. How do we balance the desire to let someone bring suit, and perform a reasonable discovery, without sinking tons of money into publicly funded fishing expeditions? This is probably going to involve filtering what types of suits can be brought and some sort of rubric for allocating resources to cases for discovery. I personally don't have a good answer for this, and I don't have as much time to think about it, or the training to think about it effectively, which many of the people who have looked into it do.
I agree, it's a problem, but not one worth tossing the whole US system of government out over. Heck, it's probably not going to even require a Constitutional change, just changes to normal Tort law.
3) Equal access to the media for ALL political parties during an election (stops there being an advantage based on wealth)
And how do you propose to do this? Require that all forms of media give a certain amount of time and space to all candidates? What if I want to say more as a candidate, am I not allowed to say more? What happens to a news program which happens to report on something which involves me but not another candidate? In other words, how do you plan to do this without strangling free political speech in the process?
It's a nice, pretty, egalitarian idea. Unfortunately, while it looks nice on paper, implementing it is fraught with way too many problems. The current system of staying out of the way and letting all sides buy whatever coverage they can afford doesn't restrict anyone, though I agree that the better financed candidates can drown out the worse financed ones. This isn't ideal, but it doesn't create the sticky problems of government censorship which the "Equal Access for All" idea is going to run into.
But hell, isn't Free Speech an archaic idea as well? After all, it's also been in place in the US for the past 200-odd years. Out with the old, in with the new.
The US system is far from perfect, but let's not pretend it's anywhere near the worst.
Government recommendation: Hey, this stuff is pretty good. You guys should try it.
Government mandate: You will use this, regardless of how good or bad it is, or we will put a bullet in you.
Just a little different.
Also, that article you linked talked about an internal DoD recommendation. They don't really care what Happy Fun Time internet cafe is using.
Really, I don't recall seeing any commercials on HBO? Well, ok, they plug their own stuff between shows, but that doesn't really count.
As has been said repeatedly, do not go in for age questions. That's a lawsuit waiting to happen.
First and foremost, you need to define the job you are hiring for. For example, looking at all the responses on here, it would seem that the average response assumed that you were hiring a programmer. Since you said "IT", I'm guessing you're actually looking for either a systems manager or tech. But you need to know that is what you are hiring.
If you haven't done so yet, sit down and write up a detailed job description. List all of the duties expected of that position and the competencies required. Will this person be actually working on servers, workstations? Will they only be handling one area? Will they be a manager, and not expected to do the actual work themselves?
If you can't do that, you're already in trouble. You need to know what you are looking for before you will find it. You might go through the hiring process and find the best programmer in the world, who can write code to make a computer sit up and dance. The problem is, if you need someone to run and maintain your email system, that coder is probably not the best choice.
Once you have done your job and determined what it is you are hiring for, then start looking at the type of work that person will be doing. that should lead you to some questions which will determine whether or not they are knowledgeable. From there, ask them about their successes and failures. Give them some scenarios and see how they work through them.
But, if you value your company, do not ask any questions about age/sex/religion.
I also like the theory of the registry. All configuration held in a single, easy to access place with a consistent interface.
Unfortunately, in practice, it's a mess. Though, I really don't think the fault is entirely MS's. As you stated, too many developers simply dumped stuff in HKLM. The problem is, there is nothing in the design of the registry to stop that and it even encourages it. There is really no easy way to have a configuration in HKCU for one user replicate across all users for a system (the default user is only replicated when a new profile is created). On the other hand, HKLM is the same for all users.
This is actually one of the places where I really thought a Vista feature was great: Registry Virtualization. Virtualize out writes to system locations in the registry on a per-user basis. Unfortunately, it's not as comprehensive as that, and MS plans to deprecate it in the future.
Because there is never any *reason* for faith
Sure there is, it's a security blanket and all knowing authority. The fact is, at some point in your life, you will die. From a purely reasonable perspective this is a terrifying prospect, as it would entail the death of personality. Science has shown no evidence of an afterlife or anything other than decomposition postmortem. A belief in a religion usually brings with it some sort afterlife, some sort of continuation of consciousness, if not identity. It provides a reason to actually try to be moral in this life, other then avoiding societal punishment.
Religion is a way to coax people into being good, even when they know they would not get caught. And for them to have a way to deal with death. Reason and logic cannot provide either of those.
Seriously, give me a purely logical reason to not commit a crime for which you know you will not be caught. Without some sort of expectation of punishment, morality breaks down.
if there were places that reason could not go, reason would not discover it, because these places do not exist.
Ok, now you're just getting circular. A blind man could not discover 'red' either, that does not prove it does not exist. Only that he is incapable of detecting it.
If they did exist, they would have to have a "footprint" of some sort or another where they connect with the rest of the universe, including the parts we know, as everything within the (or at least "this") universe are interactively connected by causality.
Now you're really getting circular. You're taking the assumption that all places are detectable by reason, therefore any place which exists, even if undetectable by reason as a given, must be detectable by reason and therefore cannot exist.
The problem there is that faith, being non-reason by definition, essentially randomizes the content of one's mind -- roll the dice enough, and that "die, heretic" combination is all but certain to come up, given enough time. As evidence: holy wars were the rule until the secular Enlightenment forced the Christians to straighten up, fly right, and constrain their faith within the bounds of something greater: reason.
So, the answer is what then? Soviet style suppression of religion? That wasn't exactly puppy dogs and roses. Perhaps we should follow in the steps of Mao and his Great Leap Forward and round up, torture and execute Buddhists? If we're going to dredge up history, Marxism-Leninism has quite a bit to answer for as well. Reason is all good and well, as long as it has some moral counterpoint to it to prevent it from falling into any number of traps with the various moral theories in philosophy (ever consider the end result of taking utilitarianism to it's ultimate extreme? Let's cut up one healthy person to save ten people with his organs). This is where a religion provides a ready made moral framework. Yes, some religions have problems and we would certainly do well to abandon much of the trappings, but for many people it's just what they need to keep them going in the right direction.
That's because you want to avoid all conflict and pretend there is none. You'll squint and wave your hands to get around it, and call those "extremists" when they don't accept your hand waving.
Really? You might want to get your crystal ball checked out, it's giving you false readings. As you mentioned later, I do:
com[e] from a modern, multicultural, liberal view of religion.
And because of that, I am willing to accept that we don't need to force anyone to believe or not believe anything as long as (as I said previously):
they aren't forcing that belief on others. Or trying to harm others who disagree with them.
Amazingly enough, our current world if full of people who believe in some form of an invisible sky wizard and they aren't out killing each other. Ya know, the millions of Christians in the US, Canada and Europe. The billions of Hindus in India and Pakistan. If anything, the middle of the bell curve seems to be willing to live and let live. Which means it's only the extremities which are violent. Good thing too, imagine having a billion or so people who really want to kill over religion.
You think there's "no harm" in teaching people to accept bullshit and argument by authority?
Certainly there is a problem with teaching people to accept arguments based on an appeal to authority. That is why it needs to be counterbalanced with a good grounding in critical thinking. However, to demand that someone not teach their child their religion is just as tyrannical as trying to force people into one. Or are we going to follow the Soviet route and start hunting down and killing priests? Atheism has had it's extremists too, and they were just as bad. It has more to do with humans being bastards than the religion they pick.
What do you say to a Muslim who says "It's right there in the Koran, somebody who leaves the religion must be killed."?
Going back to what I originally posted:
As long as they aren't forcing that belief on others. Or trying to harm others who disagree with them.
No, I mean Abraham. In Christian Mythology, Moses comes about much later. Abraham was the father of Judaism.
I've never understood why many people can't accept the co-existence of science and religion. They do not have to be mutually exclusive, it's just the extremists on both sides which create the problem.
...
Take Christianity and The Big Bang theroy. They work out just fine, so long as the Christian can accept that the Bible may not be a 100% accurate portrayal of how God did it. And the science side doesn't get up in arms with the idea that god wrote the laws of the universe. You know, maybe he dumbed it down a bit so that his bronze age audience could understand it.
My usual view of it is about:
God: In the beginning there was nothing, not time, not space, truly absolutely nothing.
Well, the quiet was nice, but it got boring fast. So, I figured I would write up the basic laws to run a universe, kick start it and see what that got me.
Abraham: Nothing, Universal Laws, kick start, got it. But what do you mean by "no time", how can you have no time?
God: Just go with me on that one, you'll figure it out later.
Abraham:OK.
God:So, the Universe exploded into existence, as it expanded a high energy plasma began to condense down into quarks, anti-quarks and a whole host of other sub-atomic particles. And it was truly chaos. Particles and their anti-particles were colliding and mutually an... Yes, what it is Abraham, why are you raising your hand, do you need to pee?
Abraham: Um, I think you lost me at about "Plasma", and I know what a "cork" is, but what's and "anti-cork", it is some kind of spout?
God: Oh right, a few thousands years early on those, aren't I? Um, how are you with Calculus?
Abraham: Calcu-what?
God: Non-euclidean algebra?
Abraham:
God: Right, fuck it. New clay tablet. In the beginning I said, "Let there be light!" and there was, and it was good. Still with me?
You know, maybe the Bible/Koran/Torah aren't really literal versions of what happened. Maybe they are just metaphors which worked for early man, and God hasn't bothered to update them.
And no matter how fun it is to pick on religious folk, there is really no harm in them believing that there is an invisible sky wizard behind everything. As long as they aren't forcing that belief on others. Or trying to harm others who disagree with them.
You are correct. This is not a new idea, nor even experiment. People have been trying to recreate life from the conditions on earth for a very long time.
ALL HAVE FAILED.
or,
ALL HAVE HAD TOO SHORT OF RUN TIME.
Seriously, these samples were created in a lab, dried, and then left to rot for 60 years. And they still show signs of amino acids. Which means that they are at least somewhat stable. All we need to do now is dump them in an early ocean like environment and watch them for a few million years and see if anything interesting happens.
That's one of the problems with testing evolution, it takes a really long time.
I doubt I am the norm, but I have always viewed my "ownership" of in game items as more akin to a rental than a lease/mortgage/etc. I rent the apartment I live in, and while in good standing I have exclusive rights to use that property within certain limitations agreed upon between myself and the owners. Were I to stop paying rent, I would be kicked out.
One of the options I had, at the time the agreement was made, was to enter into a second agreement to rent a refrigerator. Had I done so, I would not have expected to take said refrigerator with me when I left. I declined, and instead purchased my own, which I expect to take with me when I leave.
In-game "property" (Second Life's agreement not withstanding) is rented property. The fact that, in order to access it, I am required to operate within the rules of the game to obtain it is immaterial. It's the same as the 'fridge. Unlike my apartment; however, I am not allowed to bring my "equipment" into the virtual world (Second Life excepted again). Much as my apartment complex has units with already existing refrigerators, and renters of those units cannot replace them with their own (not sure how the rental cost on those worked).
MMO's are pretty much rental agreements. You are paying a monthly fee for access to their servers, the reason it's worth the money to so many people is that the servers these companies operate have a really fun set of toys to play with, and a good set of rules for making the game fun. Part of the rules is the persistence of game state from day to day.
The fact that police officers are known to abuse this type of thing is now "good" because it shows that there is no such thing as complete privacy? Do you have idea the amount of damage that this type of abuse can cause to a single person or a whole society? The police decide that you are an undesirable and just start pulling tapes on you until the find enough dirt to either throw you in jail or publicly humiliate you to the point that you are unable to do anything.
Want to eliminate an unpopular group? No problem, just start pulling tapes on a known member and create a nice web of everyone linked to that person. And then go out and either pick them all up, or as above just keep working to commit character assassination.
It only becomes a very tiny, and easy step from police harassment of people they don't like to the suppression of dissent. Got a group which is causing trouble? No problem, create the web of association, and then start picking them up on trumped up charges.
Could this be done without the video surveillance system? Certainly, but it requires a difference of effort several orders of magnitude larger. For a great example spend some time reading about the Stasi (Wikipedia link to get you started). They had almost this level of surveillance in East Germany, and were amazingly effective in hunting down political dissent and changing the dissenter's minds (most often into compost).
If you can find me some sort of system which makes the step from finding stolen cars to finding people we don't like impossible, via a physical law or other universal law; I'll happily sign on. Until then, I'm willing to accept that some people will abuse their freedoms, and that law abiding citizens will need to always be willing and able to protect themselves and others.
I think the police in CA also treat it as a: don't really care, unless we're looking for reason to pull you over, infraction. If they are looking for a car similar to yours, they'll nail you for it so that they can look you over and tick another number off their quota in the deal.
It's much the same as the hangy things on the rear-view mirror. Technically, you're not supposed to have them; I've yet to meet anyone ticked for it. It's left to the officer to determine if it obstructs the drivers view through the windshield. In other words, if the officers wants to dick with you.
At least the robots will be useful.
Wow, it never ceases to amaze me the power that:
ZOMG, NUKULAR!!1one1!!
Has in our government. Just reading that explanation of the IFR and what it could have meant is truly saddening.
My question would be, once they discover the cause, can we use that information? First application that comes to mind that I'd love to see is, if we can shorten something's half-life,
That was my first thought. Assuming it's something we can control easily and can happen at a usable level; this could be a boon for radioactive waste disposal.
For things like Sr-90 and the like which are radioactive enough to cause problems for the next few hundred years, it would be great to be able to force them down to a stable form quickly. I also wonder if in doing so we could setup an over-sized RTG and capture the resulting heat as useful energy. The big thing is going to be how much energy does the speed up process takes?
It's a good start, but it seems that it hasn't been working. If Best Western can manage to have info on 8 million credit cards on a laptop not encrypted, the system's broke. Companies dealing with CC data, and especially Social Security data should be downright paranoid about losing it. And that won't happen until the danger of punishment for losing it is far higher than the cost of securing it.
Like most things in the business world, it comes down to a cost/benefit analysis. If a CTO looks at the cost of securing their system, and sees a large number; and conversely looks as the possible cost of a security breach and sees a small number; they will never secure the system. So, we have to change the equation. Make it such that when they look at the possible cost of a breach the number is in the ridiculous range. Jail time would just be icing on the cake.