>> Why can't people paid in the Security industry show any creativity or intelligence?
I'll give you an example and solve this problem with liquids; >> Plan A: Allow people to bring them on the airplane in a bag. The bag gets the seat number written on it, and is handed to the attendants before people get on the plane. Use some space for a cubby-hole that is labelled for all the seats and people can retrieve it when they leave.
>> Plan B: Stop losing passenger luggage and don't have jerk-offs toss it like so much laundry, so that I feel safer risking my entire career by putting a laptop in checked baggage. I will fight tooth and nail right now to take my important equipment on carry-on, because I can't afford any excuses for why it doesn't show up when I arrive to run the multimedia for a convention.
>> Plan C: Explain why liquids are any more of an issue now than they were before. I mean, Liquid explosives weren't invented by those 24 people in England who wanted to take them on airplanes. Why is it an issue AFTER you supposedly caught people, but not an issue before, while these people were being watched for 6 months -- at least tell us that you informed TSA staff about the possibility so that they could watch out for it without alerting suspects. At least that... or it's all bogus and designed to scare people.
ONE LAST POINT: The biggest security risk I know of, that has gotten a pass so far on airplanes is Laptop batteries. Now that Sony has had a few burn up due to a defect, they are banning certain laptops.
But the risk has been there to use a capacitor and turn a laptop battery into a bomb -- they have a lot of energy in them.
OK, very last point: Harden the internals of the airplane. Control access to the pilots. Bring back pillows and line them with Kevlar so that passengers could protect themselves and stop anyone with a basic weapon by merely a harmless pillow fight. And, apologize for jerking our chain, with the longest running joke. Nothing has really been done to protect America from attack behind the scenes -- you are just trying to make a good show of it, by removing shoes at airports and general hassling people in public view so that you can keep them thinking about the issue. Until you quit selling military bases to Dubai, harden a few Chemical plants, or at the very least follow the Democratic plan to spend $1 Billion to put scanners for neutrino emissions in all the ports -- then quit bothering me with this totally fabricated nonsense.
Either there are no "bad guys" or you want them to have access -- if something bad happens, it's no skin off your nose and allows the administration more Carté Blanche. I'll feel a lot safer once we get rid of these people; they are either incompetent, or evil -- and it is too hard to tell the difference.
I think you are missing two or three big elephants in the room. OK, I'd say Four elephants in the room:
1) The USSR, was not a major shareholder and was not getting major technology with the US during the "Cold War." We have joint development projects with software engineers, insurance firms, Boeing, etc. We have WalMart as a revenue portal going straight to their bank and coming back as US debt. So this "entertwining with the potential enemy" is a new thing. Now there can be a debate upon whether large corporations ever were an ally in shooting wars -- perhaps it's always about profit, but it certainly makes things messy to have all the lines blurred. None of our past assumptions about "battle lines" or even "gorilla warfare" are going to work here.
2)China is philisophically different than Russia was. I'm sure security and prosperity and power are main drives in China like they were in the USSR--or any country. But Russia was a lot more "Westernized" as far as I can tell. You don't have Unions in China, which were a major force behind the breakup of the Soviet Union. There is also the "unknown factor" -- meaning, we only know the outcome of the USSR Cold War because it is now over -- we don't know how this will turn out.
3) From current blunders in "Diplomacy" if the word is even spoken at the White House right now (hey, I'm not anti-American, only anti-Bush -- it is nowhere near the same thing), I would say that unless there is an amazing course change, or some brilliant move pulled out of an unknown strategy meeting, China is going to "win" in the Middle East. Our Resource Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and possibly Iran (also called; "War on Terror" for the tourists), is not going too well. I expect that China is very interested in looking like a defense against the "Big Bad American Cowboys." So, the context of the Cold War with China, has to look at what the strategic goals are; Fresh Water and Oil -- both are going to get scarcer. A cynical person might think the Israel incursion into Lebanon (yeah, they snatched a couple troups -- after they were snatching Lebanese politicos) might have been to get access to the river. Who can say? But as Global Warming changes the structure of farming and resources -- watch for a few skirmishes for water resources that masqurade under the cover of "security."
4) This indicates that we might be undergoing a Cold War with China. Isn't that an important thing to wrap our heads around? Is the Bush administration afraid that it might look like they are making the world a more dangerous place -- or that it would hurt a contributors Christmas sales season if customers realized they were sending dollars to our rival.
Make no mistake, there are a lot of top-level strategists who've been concerned and have seen China as the biggest issue for our future. That we squander our attention on this bogus "terror war" and try to gain oil when we'd be better off with conservation and alternative energies is an even bigger blunder than the total failure in Iraq.
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I pretty much agree with tygerstripes.
I'd like to add that people need to think of their hands, stomach and environment as an "ecology." What you want to discourage is the "Lions, Tigers and Bears." Our skin has bacteria that has adapted over millions of years. Many things that are now perfectly fine on our skin and don't cause problems, were most likely at one time an infection. Afte battling for a long time, immune system and invader become either benign or dependent. Much like the bacteria in our stomach speeds up digestion (and has to be replenished after taking many antibiotics).
By using too much antibacterial soap -- you are killing everything indiscriminantly. You kill the flora, fauna, the vegetarians and the meat eaters (metaphorically speaking). When you next come across some infection, it's an environment without any ecosystem. Thus the Lions and Tigers and Bears which might actually attack your body, have nothing but YOU to deal with. Other bacteria which has safely been on your skin, and humans in general without issue, and might have outcompeted or even attacked the newcomers, aren't there any more. Using regular soap to wash off oils and excess junk on your hands doesn't destroy the ecosystem like antibacterail soap. Unless you are going to do surgery, you shouldn't bother using it.
The amount of bacteria on a keyboard is a silly concept. It's the type of bacteria and the relative proportions that matter. If you cover a keyboard with dirt -- it would have a lot of bacteria. But you could sleep on that for years and have no problems. If you cover the keyboard in some antibacterial agent -- only the resistent bacteria can survive.
If you care about not having little critters to deal with, try using more wood. The hard cell walls of the fibers physically break up the walls of most bacteria -- and only the things that feed on wood are able to hang around. Whatever feeds on wood is not likely to feed on humans.
People need to quit fighting nature and learn to live in some harmony. Most bacteria is benign or even your friend. We are hosts for a very complex ecosystem that for the most part adapts all by itself. Health is just a state where our "guests" are in harmony.
My Dad died of Cancer in the lung and kidney's -- and who knows where else, on November 3rd, 2004. He was 79 and complaining of pains and weakness and weezing for about a year... you'd think that cancer would come up. My dad supposedly has great healthcare -- back when IBM had great retirement packages, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield were supposed to cover everything.
I kept asking my mother to get an MRI... but the doctor kept stalling. Turns out I find that Doctors get nice vacation packages if they DON'T prescribe MRI's. So, we have all sorts of rationing in the United States -- it's just that people don't know it. You don't hear about a lot of good treatments unless you research them, and the doctor who approves them with the HMO might be taking a risk financially.
And most every medicine we've bought has been "off the list." Meaning the $15 co-pay is theoretical -- perhaps for Aspirin, and more and more things are "exceptional." So there are a lot of very good treatments that are listed as "experimental" and do not get covered by health insurance.
And if you cost too much, they just raise your premiums... think of it as a loan, with strings.
That stat is brought to you by the Health Insurance industry. You need to forget it -- it is totally baseless. It is a favorite Right-Wing talking point, so that they don't have to talk about some of their biggest donors; Health Insurance and Drug companies. Just look at the huge profit increases. Doctors and Patients are spending more at the same time -- does it get any more simple than that? The losers; Doctors and Patients. The Winners; Insurance and Drug companies. Do we need a bar graph or a pie chart? Or are we going to blame some poor sap who got the wrong lung removed? If healthcare costs have gone up -- of course people HAVE to sue for a lot more. They aren't buying hub caps with big malpractice awards -- people are buying wheel chairs and dialysis. So easy to blame the victems these days.
Malpractice payouts have been trending downward, while the premiums have increased more than 33%. You need to look at Money going OUT as well as coming IN. Less money out, more coming in... WINNER Insurance Industry! I would be less angry about this, if people didn't keep repeating this total fabrication by the Healthcare industry.
It's the same CorpSpeak we get with Global Warming. Thousands of Scientists, who took on their careers to further human knowledge when they could have made more money with half the brain power in the corporate industry, all say one thing, while highly paid PR flacks for the industry say another. It's amazing that the truth is even leaking out.
In states that have capped malpractice awards, the most they've seen in cost savings has been 2% -- that's not even the average. Why? Because insurance companies have been pitting doctors against patients -- but the doctors are catching on now.
The AMA could easily get rid of the few doctors who are responsible for MOST of the malpractice claims -- why doesn't it get rid of bad doctors should be the question.
The Health Care problems in America are totally created by Industry Profits, too much paperwork, and Corporations buying politicians. If all healthcare were free-market and cash based for those who could pay, and the rest was covered by government, we could have EXACTLY the same level of care we have right now, with about 30% of the costs. The math is pretty easy; 50% of healthcare money goes to Insurance. Of the 50% that goes to medicine, about 33% of that is Administrative costs. Then add on the inflated costs of drugs due to an anti-competittive system, poor healthcare being subsidized by the taxpayer, and not getting rid of bad doctors.
When looking at Health Care costs think about the following bit of trivia: For every $2 spent on healthcare, $1 goes to the insurance industry. 33% of the money at a doctor's office goes to administrative costs and about 36% at hospitals. About 50% of money in the healthcare system is from the Taxpayer (couple that with some math, and read the first statement and realize that we ALREADY HAVE socialized medicine). The cost of an insured woman's baby to go to term and be born in America is about $10,000. The cost of an uninsured mother's baby is around $110,000 (the cost of not having prenatal healthcare). The US is falling behind other nations that spend less on life expectancy. We are neck and neck with Saudi Arabia and slighlty behind Cuba. Whoopee! Somewhere around 26th in the world for quality.
I was writing about this on another blog,.. I had some other wonderful stats -- but those are the ones on the top of my head.
We could also look at the looming issue of Diebeties and Asthma in kids; the high cost of poor diet and pollution.
There are other side-effects, either of our increasing pollution and/or our wilfullness to employ strange chemicals in our lives without enough testing. So, along with a system that has been driven by profits for the Hospitals, Insurance and drug Companies, rather than for benefits to citizens (like funding cures over treatments like Viagra), I'd like to just show some stats about Autism: (some suspect Autism is linked to mercury-based in immunizations -- which is slowly being reduced to hide this fact -- note, China had almost no incidence of Autism until Western immunizations showed up -- but I can't find any causation)
1 in 166 births(1) 1 to 1.5 million Americans(2) Fastest-growing developmental disability 10 - 17 % annual growth Growth comparison during the 1990s(3): U.S. population increase: 13% Disabilities increase: 16% Autism increase: 172% $90 billion annual cost(4) 90% of costs are in adult services(4) Cost of lifelong care can be reduced by 2/3 with early diagnosis and intervention(4) In 10 years, the annual cost will be $200-400 billion(5)
To bolster your argument; I can buy 3 DVD movies for $15 about a year or two after release, if they aren't top ten movies. How much more effort does it take to make a movie, than to record a CD? Sure there is promotion and such, but come on... Come On!
I could create the equivalent of a professional, multilayered music CD on my home computer with about $4000 in hardware and software. You can't even get a good camera for that to make a movie.
Plus, aren't we already paying a premium for every blank CD and DVD to offset the cost of piracy? Don't we already own all the stuff we steal? Ahem, some people, borrow.
For something to get the weight of law behind it, under previous Constitutional thought, it had to have utility for the Consumer. Nobody ever brings up the notion that the "consumer is sovereign" anymore. But with the DMCA they've done an end-run around that notion. But the whole idea of region coding should not have one legal leg to stand on in a true free market.
The only thing free about our market, is the ability to drive down wages. Everything else is to guarantee profits for things we don't want.
Only Millions of $, investments in all of their oil companies, the Carlysle group, and yes Destabilizing Iraq to run up prices -- though that was probably Cheney and the mercenaries, not directly Bush -- that boy is clueless.
You can also look to Dubai to find a lot of the banking connections -- there is such a thing as using more than one account.
"...if the Saudis were caught assisting the Bushes in any way they'd be pariahs among their own people." Based upon what? The Saudi princes are pariahs amongst their own people, but folks still cheer them on, rather than become the next beheading at the soccer stadium. Now here is a tin-foil-hat theory, but I still think it has merit; the al Qaeda thing, is a phony anti-Saudi movement, meant to recruit would-be rabble rousers into a government-backed anti-government movement. Just read 1984 -- it's not an original idea.
Of course, I'm sure what I'm saying will be dismissed. These sorts of IDEAS are emotionally rejected out of hand, rather than just following the money, and looking at past events.
Bush and the Saudis are linked at the hip. The backed Arbusto Oil, which traded with Iraq during the time when it was illegal for US companies to trade with Iraq. They re-flagged offshore to get around that small impediment. Just google; "Arbusto oil saudi" if you don't belive me. A few links down you'll notice "Bin Laden family invests in Arbusto."
It's so amazing how the Average American, sounds exactly like the marketing materials at major corporations sound.
Yes. It is always reasonable in the Mainstream press, and always explained to us.
Market forces and all that.
Yes, the market forces that created the Gas Shortage when Jimmy Carter was trying to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and to break the grip of the Banksters.
And then, with the Foxes guarding the Chicken Coup, we got $3 a gallon. Now if most of that were taxes, paying for infrastructure, to get people to quit wasting gas and to reduce foreign dependence, it would be a good thing. Ross Perot suggested about a $.50 tax on gas to eliminate a lot of federal income taxes and he was scoffed at by all the "Business 101 geniuses."
So, it is perfectly reasonable that it all comes down now, just before the elections -- because, um, we've resolved everything in the Middle East and it's all so much safer (what with the announcement by terror groups that they are going to target oil supplies).
Here is a fun bit of trivia I came across... while we hear a lot about China's growth, actual use of gasoline was down 1% last year.
Of course there is no peak oil... but Saudi Arabia was down 6% or 7% in production.
Now fuel processing took a hit during Katrina, but the vintage plants which probably needed to be rebuilt ten years ago are a great write-off at taxpayer expense.
Overall, you can't ignore the HUGE, profits reported -- and that is reported. Anyone who understands a little bit of Multinational creative cost structuring knows that they can hide profits quite easily.
Does anyone ever suggest that the Oil Cartels might not be actually charging $60 or $70 a barrell? With a multi-trillion $ market, what is the Risk vs. Reward for over-bidding, and then slipping money under the table back to the bidder while the seller keeps a bit for the trouble? Really, nothing. There is no government oversight in our crooked congress, and there certainly isn't any in the mostly dictatorships that sell the oil. I include Mexico as a dictatorship -- especially when our government helps to fix the winner.
It really annoys me that anyone throws "Market Forces" BS at oil prices. People like to sound smart by repeating the crap that PR agencies dish out.
The Mermon rev of the Intel Chip is supposed to support Flash memory... so this is just around the corner. There are rumors that Apple will use Flash memory pretty soon to cache OS and commonly used applications. This will come in handy for laptops.
It is arleady used (I believe) to some extent in the hard-drive based iPods -- they cache parts of songs in flash memory to avoid using the tiny drive too much.
Bottom line, they reacted fairly quickly given the circumstances. Air Force jets were over NYC roughly 15 minutes after the second plane hit. Had it been a conventional attack, they could have engaged the enemy plane(s) and done fairly well. There were only like 2 military jets in the air in the entire eastern part of the US on the morning of 9/11,
Yeah -- that makes a lot of sense. A government that sends everyone away and leaves us defenseless to run a drill on how to defend us. Isn't it ironic that Dick Cheney was there and they were doing drills on planes attacking buildings -- how convenient for the terrorists.
And July of 2001, Bush changed the policy so that only 3 people in the united states could allow a plane to be shot down. Bush. Cheney. Rumsfeld. Before that time, field commanders could.
Weather radar would not be as ideally suited to track these planes as Air Traffic Control radar -- that's kind of what IT is designed to do.
Wow -- that's crazy talk. This government would never lie to us.
And look at all the big foot flies Spacecraft stories that are untrue on the web -- see! All conspiracies are bogus. No group of people would meet in secret, and plan something for power or profit -- it's just too farfetched.
[is that sarcasm obvious enough]
Now we get to worry about the manufactured Immigration issue -- the only solution is a National ID Card with biometric data, going to a company named ChoicePoint which rigged the 2000, 2004 elections and is run by James Baker. Oh no -- it isn't a conspiracy, the only solution is more intrusive government and obscene profits for Bush's friends. We couldn't possibly enforce current law, jail CEOs who hire illegals and solve this problem.
I think the nut jobs are those people who cling to the conspiracy that this government can be trusted.
The FAA had better be able to track a plane off of transponder -- or we would have had a lot of nasty accidents on the easter seabord. I looked into this and there is extensive documentation about what happens when a plane "goes of transponder." This has nothing to do with NORAD -- the Air Traffic Controller computers highlight any plane on radar NOT on transponder. They know exactly where planes are in the NorthEast.
They knew one of the planes was hijacked before it took off -- an airline attended called and was reporting the hijacking about a half our before they took off.
So, 102 minutes + 30 minutes of inaction. I think the Pentagon owes taxpayers a few Trillion $ of taxpayer money.
Well, for every Bigfoot story, we have a really nutty conspiracy like Cigarettes causing cancer. Some really crazy people thought that big tobacco and the government were hiding the addictive and cancerous properties of cigarettes secret. They even paid scientists and doctors to lie -- imagine! A business or government lying for profit and power.
It's a good thing you guys addressed the nutty conspiracies, and not the hard to answer ones -- like how a steel building pancakes into its own footprint from a kerosene fire. Or how flight 93 had wreckage 8 miles away when it supposedly rammed into the ground.
I'm sure there is some site that has bigfoot piloting a 757 and flying it into the WTC as well.
Funny, I thought the "consensus" was saying that Global Warming wasn't occuring.
Though, that consensus was bought and payed for PR ads and the Media (mostly), and echoed with a snicker among business folks over coffee.
This from Michael Crichton? What he is talking about, is how the establishment doesn't like change and new ideas. We should be hesitant to jump on every new wild-eyed theory. But all the same... those examples are of "Conservative" scientists -- those who are maintaining the Status Quo.
Once Global Warming is accepted as the status quo, then perhaps, someone saying their is global cooling on the horizon would be challenging that. At least in the US -- that is not yet the case.
You know, with this sort of attitude -- everyone would still be smoking Cigarettes because you'd still be blaming doctors for the "lung cancer conspiracy theory."
So what if a few people out of a hundred are saying; "You have angered mother earth." That is not, and has never been the issue. Scientists have pushed the Global Warming issue. And I and many of the people I know (anecdotally), aren't saying it is 100% humanity or that you have to learn a special handshake.
We need to get off our asses and accept this -- then argue about what we should do.
Having to listen to the same corporate PR flacks who told us it wasn't happening, then pitch -- we can't do anything about it is not nearly as annoying as saying; "we can't do anything about Global Warming until Liberals learn how to talk the way we want them to." Maybe, if Environmentalists were more like the people who like to ignore what they do...
Eat your pound of crow, take your foot out of your mouth, and listen to people who have been right. We can never coddle people who want to live it up and consume enough. The best thing is to keep pushing the issue and bring forth inspiring examples of Green entrepreneurs making money and making a difference. I'd rather that than read about Donald Trump rolling over his debt on another unsuspecting financier.
I expect Apple to try and make Win Apps run on a MacIntel.
Taking in consideration, of course, what you so astutely noted; that making interoperability TOO good would kill Mac development.
So, I expect them to do a compatibility mode... to just run the application at a reduced speed and to allow cut and paste and maybe printing. That's what I'd do.... make it work great for marketing, but keep it limited and annoying in use. You just need people to use the Mac for a year and to transition over from their Windows experience, while promising them that their WinBlot2 file will still work.
That's probably the main stumbling block to convert.... all those old files. Psychologically, people want to have all this dreck and junk software -- for that you really don't need performance. I mean, all the really good consumer apps are available for both platforms. 3D Planner for home is probably gathering dust on your shelf. But, the user wants to know that the investment that never paid off is at least accessible.
At the very least, they could use some Wine extensions or something third party. It doesn't have to perform -- just allow the access to old files and work.
I am too lazy right now to track it down, but one of the terrorists had credit cards from a bank in Dubai. The money left in the account went back on Sept 11 -- why waste it right? Anyway, the FBI was forbidden to track terrorist financing and that of the Bin Laden family by a Bush memorandum.
What do you think, credit through banks is a blind transaction? If only by design.
Try moving $20 thousand all of a sudden in cash -- watch the flags go up.
My formal discipline is as an artist, so let me handle the explaining.
Uncertainty means you can't know a quantum particles location and speed absolutely. When you fix the position, the speed is unknown -- but you can make estimates and predictions of some reliability.
I'm pretty sure the "cloning" means transferring a quantum state. Say like spin direction -- you can know the speed and the clone the spin to another quantum particle by means of entanglement. Entanglement is a fancy word meaning; "hanging out for a while, and then getting kind of click-ish." Like teenagers that smoke, quantum particles tend to go along to get along. If a water molecule hangs on on a piece of glass and another hangs out around a rusty nail -- at the quantum level, there will be a difference where all the quantum structures of the water that hung out on the glass are different -- sort of in phase with the glass, because "tuning" to the glass molecule takes less energy. Much like coming out of a metal deth concert will make a persons head vibrate -- because not moving to the beat could leave bruises. Rock concerts and physics have been known to be entangled for many years now.
Now you could cheat Heisenberg (not nature, she hates that) and clone a quantum property and test that of the original and clone another and test another property -- this can get you speed, location, spin and area code of a particle that likes it's privacy -- just not from the same source and not with perfect accuracy -- thus preserving the egos of Physicists who like to say; "you can't violate the uncertainty principle." If you ever want to start a fight at a geek mixer, just start violating a principle.
Quantum tunneling is a more accurate name than teleportation but Quatum Teleportation has better marketing value and that keeps the money rolling in. Stupid testosterone laden spooks love to give physicists money and dream of being able to pop into anywhere through teleportation unannounced. And where goes the money, there goes the spin, right? Or maybe it's quantum immigration -- never mind. It just means "poof" it was here and it changed into something we don't know about, and then "poof" it is elsewhere -- because we don't want to violate anymore laws of nature or think too hard, we'll just say it teleported. The main problem with Quantum Teleportation was that it is a newish concept, and Douglas Adams didn't get a chance to make fun of it. I kind of get the idea that Physicists think that you force the teleportation by giving a quantum thingy a choice between violating a physics law and thus being insulting, or going "poof" -- always a slave of fashion, the particle goes "poof." My main problem with Quantum physics is trying to understand what folks don't understand yet about the Universe, and then based on those misconceptions, how would 5 blind physicists describe an Elephant. That's how you get the Charmed Quark and the uncertainty principle. It's the same reason Doctors call that swelling in your lungs that makes you cough Broncitis, because they don't want to say; "your lungs are swelly and irritated" and then charge you money for something you knew before spending an hour in the waiting room and paying a bunch of money. A Charmed Quark is different from a Boson -- but they are likely the same thingy, just kind of in a different mood.
By the way -- I'm so happy that Quantum Strings are getting less trendy, aren't you? The old boys are on the right track now with vacuum vortices and the aether. Or do we not believe that right now? See, just being able to see how the universe works at a fundamental level, and how everything pulled itself into creation is a lot easier than understanding this Quantum physics stuff. But I digress...
So, I haven't read the articlehttp://www.physorg.com/news10924.html so it may be possible to explain it-- because, due to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, you can not both study Quantum Physics, and explain it to others at the same time.
I don't think that is exactly accurate. Because to test a quantum property is to effect it -- you cannot test one specific quantum particle for both speed and location -- for instances. But if you cloned it; you could test the clone for speed and the original for location and perhaps know exactly both pieces of data. The rule isn't that things have to be uncertain or unknowable -- from my interpretation, it means that you "effect" things quatumly by interacting with them. They exist as probabilities until defined.
Cloning and tunneling may allow you to sidestep this.
Even a 99% accurate clone would adhere to the uncertainty principle. And 99.9999998% would still be uncertain. There is no reason that in terms of real world cloning, a "useful" copy could be made. I knew this was going to be possible -- not because I'm trained in Quantum Mechanics, but because I'm a really, really good guesser.
The uncertainty principle merely guarantees that no clones of Captain Kirk will be good -- they may look like him, but they will end up with a goatee and be evil.
An iPod can also be sharpened into a point and used as a "shiv" to kill. It won't work as well in the USB ports afterward -- but has anyone addressed this problem? If force swallowed, an iPod nano can stop air in somebody's win-pipe.
Reading other political blogs, I see a lot of anecdotal "Vitriol" directed at Google. While Yahoo and Microsoft are barely mentioned -- or even more appropriately, our government, which can only muster a weak for show protest and then beg for more funds from China. The press acts like Google has invented Chinese censorship and the problems with Tibet just started. I can't believe the huge down-turn in stock, or the incessant drum-beat about China are an accident. China is in the target for standing up to Government snooping.
Censorship and spying in America are a much bigger issue for me than what happens in China. America leads the world for better or worse. We need to push for "better."
Can nobody see the Irony in this statement; "The Greenland Ice Cores showed changes in climate in eons past which suggested changes in ocean level that could have been many meters change in JUST 10-20 YEARS. So the prior record does show changes "different in degree to any previous change that can be measured or inferred.""
At this rate, there won't be any Greenland Ice that lasts past July -- so how could a similar warming period be in the ice cores? You have to have permanent ice that gets added to.
This whole issue is very important because we are looking at "trigger events" that accelerate the increase in water levels. When the ice sheets broke off from Antarctica, they unplugged the flow of glaciers into the ocean -- a simple but powerful concept was realized then by climatologists; "ice doesn't have to melt to raise water levels." If you get the ice from the land masses into the oceans -- they take up about the same area frozen as melted. The same thing is happening in Greenland... a slight increase in melt-water lubricates the slide of ice into the ocean. So increased melting is multiplied by increased ice flow -- more perhaps than a doubling.
Then we have the melting of the Siberian perma-frost. The mud and percolation of methane create a better heat trap than the ice cover -- increasing the melting. The Siberia may increase the level of natural greenhouse gases by 50%.
So the un-natural changes are accelerating natural changes -- the global warming may soon become "non-linear." This is the biggest crisis facing the world right now. The second biggest is the mob run US government -- which is doing nothing to address the problem.
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>> Why can't people paid in the Security industry show any creativity or intelligence?
I'll give you an example and solve this problem with liquids;
>> Plan A:
Allow people to bring them on the airplane in a bag.
The bag gets the seat number written on it, and is handed to the attendants before people get on the plane.
Use some space for a cubby-hole that is labelled for all the seats and people can retrieve it when they leave.
>> Plan B:
Stop losing passenger luggage and don't have jerk-offs toss it like so much laundry, so that I feel safer risking my entire career by putting a laptop in checked baggage. I will fight tooth and nail right now to take my important equipment on carry-on, because I can't afford any excuses for why it doesn't show up when I arrive to run the multimedia for a convention.
>> Plan C:
Explain why liquids are any more of an issue now than they were before. I mean, Liquid explosives weren't invented by those 24 people in England who wanted to take them on airplanes. Why is it an issue AFTER you supposedly caught people, but not an issue before, while these people were being watched for 6 months -- at least tell us that you informed TSA staff about the possibility so that they could watch out for it without alerting suspects. At least that... or it's all bogus and designed to scare people.
ONE LAST POINT:
The biggest security risk I know of, that has gotten a pass so far on airplanes is Laptop batteries. Now that Sony has had a few burn up due to a defect, they are banning certain laptops.
But the risk has been there to use a capacitor and turn a laptop battery into a bomb -- they have a lot of energy in them.
OK, very last point:
Harden the internals of the airplane. Control access to the pilots. Bring back pillows and line them with Kevlar so that passengers could protect themselves and stop anyone with a basic weapon by merely a harmless pillow fight. And, apologize for jerking our chain, with the longest running joke. Nothing has really been done to protect America from attack behind the scenes -- you are just trying to make a good show of it, by removing shoes at airports and general hassling people in public view so that you can keep them thinking about the issue. Until you quit selling military bases to Dubai, harden a few Chemical plants, or at the very least follow the Democratic plan to spend $1 Billion to put scanners for neutrino emissions in all the ports -- then quit bothering me with this totally fabricated nonsense.
Either there are no "bad guys" or you want them to have access -- if something bad happens, it's no skin off your nose and allows the administration more Carté Blanche. I'll feel a lot safer once we get rid of these people; they are either incompetent, or evil -- and it is too hard to tell the difference.
I think you are missing two or three big elephants in the room. OK, I'd say Four elephants in the room:
1) The USSR, was not a major shareholder and was not getting major technology with the US during the "Cold War." We have joint development projects with software engineers, insurance firms, Boeing, etc. We have WalMart as a revenue portal going straight to their bank and coming back as US debt. So this "entertwining with the potential enemy" is a new thing. Now there can be a debate upon whether large corporations ever were an ally in shooting wars -- perhaps it's always about profit, but it certainly makes things messy to have all the lines blurred. None of our past assumptions about "battle lines" or even "gorilla warfare" are going to work here.
2)China is philisophically different than Russia was. I'm sure security and prosperity and power are main drives in China like they were in the USSR--or any country. But Russia was a lot more "Westernized" as far as I can tell. You don't have Unions in China, which were a major force behind the breakup of the Soviet Union. There is also the "unknown factor" -- meaning, we only know the outcome of the USSR Cold War because it is now over -- we don't know how this will turn out.
3) From current blunders in "Diplomacy" if the word is even spoken at the White House right now (hey, I'm not anti-American, only anti-Bush -- it is nowhere near the same thing), I would say that unless there is an amazing course change, or some brilliant move pulled out of an unknown strategy meeting, China is going to "win" in the Middle East. Our Resource Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and possibly Iran (also called; "War on Terror" for the tourists), is not going too well. I expect that China is very interested in looking like a defense against the "Big Bad American Cowboys." So, the context of the Cold War with China, has to look at what the strategic goals are; Fresh Water and Oil -- both are going to get scarcer. A cynical person might think the Israel incursion into Lebanon (yeah, they snatched a couple troups -- after they were snatching Lebanese politicos) might have been to get access to the river. Who can say? But as Global Warming changes the structure of farming and resources -- watch for a few skirmishes for water resources that masqurade under the cover of "security."
4) This indicates that we might be undergoing a Cold War with China. Isn't that an important thing to wrap our heads around? Is the Bush administration afraid that it might look like they are making the world a more dangerous place -- or that it would hurt a contributors Christmas sales season if customers realized they were sending dollars to our rival.
Make no mistake, there are a lot of top-level strategists who've been concerned and have seen China as the biggest issue for our future. That we squander our attention on this bogus "terror war" and try to gain oil when we'd be better off with conservation and alternative energies is an even bigger blunder than the total failure in Iraq.
I pretty much agree with tygerstripes.
I'd like to add that people need to think of their hands, stomach and environment as an "ecology." What you want to discourage is the "Lions, Tigers and Bears." Our skin has bacteria that has adapted over millions of years. Many things that are now perfectly fine on our skin and don't cause problems, were most likely at one time an infection. Afte battling for a long time, immune system and invader become either benign or dependent. Much like the bacteria in our stomach speeds up digestion (and has to be replenished after taking many antibiotics).
By using too much antibacterial soap -- you are killing everything indiscriminantly. You kill the flora, fauna, the vegetarians and the meat eaters (metaphorically speaking). When you next come across some infection, it's an environment without any ecosystem. Thus the Lions and Tigers and Bears which might actually attack your body, have nothing but YOU to deal with. Other bacteria which has safely been on your skin, and humans in general without issue, and might have outcompeted or even attacked the newcomers, aren't there any more. Using regular soap to wash off oils and excess junk on your hands doesn't destroy the ecosystem like antibacterail soap. Unless you are going to do surgery, you shouldn't bother using it.
The amount of bacteria on a keyboard is a silly concept. It's the type of bacteria and the relative proportions that matter. If you cover a keyboard with dirt -- it would have a lot of bacteria. But you could sleep on that for years and have no problems. If you cover the keyboard in some antibacterial agent -- only the resistent bacteria can survive.
If you care about not having little critters to deal with, try using more wood. The hard cell walls of the fibers physically break up the walls of most bacteria -- and only the things that feed on wood are able to hang around. Whatever feeds on wood is not likely to feed on humans.
People need to quit fighting nature and learn to live in some harmony. Most bacteria is benign or even your friend. We are hosts for a very complex ecosystem that for the most part adapts all by itself. Health is just a state where our "guests" are in harmony.
My Dad died of Cancer in the lung and kidney's -- and who knows where else, on November 3rd, 2004.
... think of it as a loan, with strings.
He was 79 and complaining of pains and weakness and weezing for about a year... you'd think that cancer would come up.
My dad supposedly has great healthcare -- back when IBM had great retirement packages, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield were supposed to cover everything.
I kept asking my mother to get an MRI... but the doctor kept stalling.
Turns out I find that Doctors get nice vacation packages if they DON'T prescribe MRI's.
So, we have all sorts of rationing in the United States -- it's just that people don't know it. You don't hear about a lot of good treatments unless you research them, and the doctor who approves them with the HMO might be taking a risk financially.
And most every medicine we've bought has been "off the list." Meaning the $15 co-pay is theoretical -- perhaps for Aspirin, and more and more things are "exceptional." So there are a lot of very good treatments that are listed as "experimental" and do not get covered by health insurance.
And if you cost too much, they just raise your premiums
That stat is brought to you by the Health Insurance industry. You need to forget it -- it is totally baseless. It is a favorite Right-Wing talking point, so that they don't have to talk about some of their biggest donors; Health Insurance and Drug companies. Just look at the huge profit increases. Doctors and Patients are spending more at the same time -- does it get any more simple than that? The losers; Doctors and Patients. The Winners; Insurance and Drug companies. Do we need a bar graph or a pie chart? Or are we going to blame some poor sap who got the wrong lung removed? If healthcare costs have gone up -- of course people HAVE to sue for a lot more. They aren't buying hub caps with big malpractice awards -- people are buying wheel chairs and dialysis. So easy to blame the victems these days.
Malpractice payouts have been trending downward, while the premiums have increased more than 33%. You need to look at Money going OUT as well as coming IN. Less money out, more coming in... WINNER Insurance Industry! I would be less angry about this, if people didn't keep repeating this total fabrication by the Healthcare industry.
It's the same CorpSpeak we get with Global Warming. Thousands of Scientists, who took on their careers to further human knowledge when they could have made more money with half the brain power in the corporate industry, all say one thing, while highly paid PR flacks for the industry say another. It's amazing that the truth is even leaking out.
In states that have capped malpractice awards, the most they've seen in cost savings has been 2% -- that's not even the average. Why? Because insurance companies have been pitting doctors against patients -- but the doctors are catching on now.
The AMA could easily get rid of the few doctors who are responsible for MOST of the malpractice claims -- why doesn't it get rid of bad doctors should be the question.
The Health Care problems in America are totally created by Industry Profits, too much paperwork, and Corporations buying politicians. If all healthcare were free-market and cash based for those who could pay, and the rest was covered by government, we could have EXACTLY the same level of care we have right now, with about 30% of the costs. The math is pretty easy; 50% of healthcare money goes to Insurance. Of the 50% that goes to medicine, about 33% of that is Administrative costs. Then add on the inflated costs of drugs due to an anti-competittive system, poor healthcare being subsidized by the taxpayer, and not getting rid of bad doctors.
When looking at Health Care costs think about the following bit of trivia:
e name=FactsStats...
For every $2 spent on healthcare, $1 goes to the insurance industry.
33% of the money at a doctor's office goes to administrative costs and about 36% at hospitals.
About 50% of money in the healthcare system is from the Taxpayer (couple that with some math, and read the first statement and realize that we ALREADY HAVE socialized medicine).
The cost of an insured woman's baby to go to term and be born in America is about $10,000. The cost of an uninsured mother's baby is around $110,000 (the cost of not having prenatal healthcare).
The US is falling behind other nations that spend less on life expectancy. We are neck and neck with Saudi Arabia and slighlty behind Cuba. Whoopee! Somewhere around 26th in the world for quality.
I was writing about this on another blog,.. I had some other wonderful stats -- but those are the ones on the top of my head.
We could also look at the looming issue of Diebeties and Asthma in kids; the high cost of poor diet and pollution.
There are other side-effects, either of our increasing pollution and/or our wilfullness to employ strange chemicals in our lives without enough testing.
So, along with a system that has been driven by profits for the Hospitals, Insurance and drug Companies, rather than for benefits to citizens (like funding cures over treatments like Viagra), I'd like to just show some stats about Autism:
(some suspect Autism is linked to mercury-based in immunizations -- which is slowly being reduced to hide this fact -- note, China had almost no incidence of Autism until Western immunizations showed up -- but I can't find any causation)
1 in 166 births(1)
1 to 1.5 million Americans(2)
Fastest-growing developmental disability
10 - 17 % annual growth
Growth comparison during the 1990s(3):
U.S. population increase: 13%
Disabilities increase: 16%
Autism increase: 172%
$90 billion annual cost(4)
90% of costs are in adult services(4)
Cost of lifelong care can be reduced by 2/3 with early diagnosis and intervention(4)
In 10 years, the annual cost will be $200-400 billion(5)
http://www.autism-society.org/site/PageServer?pag
Yeah, we have some looming problems -- this is only one disease.
To bolster your argument; I can buy 3 DVD movies for $15 about a year or two after release, if they aren't top ten movies. How much more effort does it take to make a movie, than to record a CD? Sure there is promotion and such, but come on... Come On!
I could create the equivalent of a professional, multilayered music CD on my home computer with about $4000 in hardware and software. You can't even get a good camera for that to make a movie.
Plus, aren't we already paying a premium for every blank CD and DVD to offset the cost of piracy? Don't we already own all the stuff we steal? Ahem, some people, borrow.
For something to get the weight of law behind it, under previous Constitutional thought, it had to have utility for the Consumer. Nobody ever brings up the notion that the "consumer is sovereign" anymore. But with the DMCA they've done an end-run around that notion. But the whole idea of region coding should not have one legal leg to stand on in a true free market.
The only thing free about our market, is the ability to drive down wages. Everything else is to guarantee profits for things we don't want.
The Bushies don't have ties with the Saudis?
Only Millions of $, investments in all of their oil companies, the Carlysle group, and yes Destabilizing Iraq to run up prices -- though that was probably Cheney and the mercenaries, not directly Bush -- that boy is clueless.
You can also look to Dubai to find a lot of the banking connections -- there is such a thing as using more than one account.
"...if the Saudis were caught assisting the Bushes in any way they'd be pariahs among their own people." Based upon what? The Saudi princes are pariahs amongst their own people, but folks still cheer them on, rather than become the next beheading at the soccer stadium. Now here is a tin-foil-hat theory, but I still think it has merit; the al Qaeda thing, is a phony anti-Saudi movement, meant to recruit would-be rabble rousers into a government-backed anti-government movement. Just read 1984 -- it's not an original idea.
Of course, I'm sure what I'm saying will be dismissed. These sorts of IDEAS are emotionally rejected out of hand, rather than just following the money, and looking at past events.
Bush and the Saudis are linked at the hip. The backed Arbusto Oil, which traded with Iraq during the time when it was illegal for US companies to trade with Iraq. They re-flagged offshore to get around that small impediment. Just google; "Arbusto oil saudi" if you don't belive me. A few links down you'll notice "Bin Laden family invests in Arbusto."
It's so amazing how the Average American, sounds exactly like the marketing materials at major corporations sound.
Yes. It is always reasonable in the Mainstream press, and always explained to us.
... but Saudi Arabia was down 6% or 7% in production.
Market forces and all that.
Yes, the market forces that created the Gas Shortage when Jimmy Carter was trying to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and to break the grip of the Banksters.
And then, with the Foxes guarding the Chicken Coup, we got $3 a gallon. Now if most of that were taxes, paying for infrastructure, to get people to quit wasting gas and to reduce foreign dependence, it would be a good thing. Ross Perot suggested about a $.50 tax on gas to eliminate a lot of federal income taxes and he was scoffed at by all the "Business 101 geniuses."
So, it is perfectly reasonable that it all comes down now, just before the elections -- because, um, we've resolved everything in the Middle East and it's all so much safer (what with the announcement by terror groups that they are going to target oil supplies).
Here is a fun bit of trivia I came across... while we hear a lot about China's growth, actual use of gasoline was down 1% last year.
Of course there is no peak oil
Now fuel processing took a hit during Katrina, but the vintage plants which probably needed to be rebuilt ten years ago are a great write-off at taxpayer expense.
Overall, you can't ignore the HUGE, profits reported -- and that is reported. Anyone who understands a little bit of Multinational creative cost structuring knows that they can hide profits quite easily.
Does anyone ever suggest that the Oil Cartels might not be actually charging $60 or $70 a barrell? With a multi-trillion $ market, what is the Risk vs. Reward for over-bidding, and then slipping money under the table back to the bidder while the seller keeps a bit for the trouble? Really, nothing. There is no government oversight in our crooked congress, and there certainly isn't any in the mostly dictatorships that sell the oil. I include Mexico as a dictatorship -- especially when our government helps to fix the winner.
It really annoys me that anyone throws "Market Forces" BS at oil prices. People like to sound smart by repeating the crap that PR agencies dish out.
The Mermon rev of the Intel Chip is supposed to support Flash memory ... so this is just around the corner. There are rumors that Apple will use Flash memory pretty soon to cache OS and commonly used applications. This will come in handy for laptops.
It is arleady used (I believe) to some extent in the hard-drive based iPods -- they cache parts of songs in flash memory to avoid using the tiny drive too much.
Bottom line, they reacted fairly quickly given the circumstances. Air Force jets were over NYC roughly 15 minutes after the second plane hit. Had it been a conventional attack, they could have engaged the enemy plane(s) and done fairly well. There were only like 2 military jets in the air in the entire eastern part of the US on the morning of 9/11,
Yeah -- that makes a lot of sense. A government that sends everyone away and leaves us defenseless to run a drill on how to defend us.
Isn't it ironic that Dick Cheney was there and they were doing drills on planes attacking buildings -- how convenient for the terrorists.
And July of 2001, Bush changed the policy so that only 3 people in the united states could allow a plane to be shot down. Bush. Cheney. Rumsfeld. Before that time, field commanders could.
Weather radar would not be as ideally suited to track these planes as Air Traffic Control radar -- that's kind of what IT is designed to do.
Wow -- that's crazy talk. This government would never lie to us.
And look at all the big foot flies Spacecraft stories that are untrue on the web -- see! All conspiracies are bogus. No group of people would meet in secret, and plan something for power or profit -- it's just too farfetched.
[is that sarcasm obvious enough]
Now we get to worry about the manufactured Immigration issue -- the only solution is a National ID Card with biometric data, going to a company named ChoicePoint which rigged the 2000, 2004 elections and is run by James Baker. Oh no -- it isn't a conspiracy, the only solution is more intrusive government and obscene profits for Bush's friends. We couldn't possibly enforce current law, jail CEOs who hire illegals and solve this problem.
I think the nut jobs are those people who cling to the conspiracy that this government can be trusted.
Utter bullshit. NORAD is a red herring.
The FAA had better be able to track a plane off of transponder -- or we would have had a lot of nasty accidents on the easter seabord. I looked into this and there is extensive documentation about what happens when a plane "goes of transponder." This has nothing to do with NORAD -- the Air Traffic Controller computers highlight any plane on radar NOT on transponder. They know exactly where planes are in the NorthEast.
They knew one of the planes was hijacked before it took off -- an airline attended called and was reporting the hijacking about a half our before they took off.
So, 102 minutes + 30 minutes of inaction. I think the Pentagon owes taxpayers a few Trillion $ of taxpayer money.
Well, for every Bigfoot story, we have a really nutty conspiracy like Cigarettes causing cancer. Some really crazy people thought that big tobacco and the government were hiding the addictive and cancerous properties of cigarettes secret. They even paid scientists and doctors to lie -- imagine! A business or government lying for profit and power.
It's a good thing you guys addressed the nutty conspiracies, and not the hard to answer ones -- like how a steel building pancakes into its own footprint from a kerosene fire. Or how flight 93 had wreckage 8 miles away when it supposedly rammed into the ground.
I'm sure there is some site that has bigfoot piloting a 757 and flying it into the WTC as well.
Keep up the vigilance!
Let me just pull out my opinion:
Corn Syrup is the Devil!
Processed foods are crap -- even diet.
Next might be the Ozone we have to breathe -- maybe nuclear testing dust.
Get rid of Corn Syrup, reduce bread eating, drink water -- success!
That is all. Carry on.
Funny, I thought the "consensus" was saying that Global Warming wasn't occuring.
Though, that consensus was bought and payed for PR ads and the Media (mostly), and echoed with a snicker among business folks over coffee.
This from Michael Crichton? What he is talking about, is how the establishment doesn't like change and new ideas. We should be hesitant to jump on every new wild-eyed theory. But all the same... those examples are of "Conservative" scientists -- those who are maintaining the Status Quo.
Once Global Warming is accepted as the status quo, then perhaps, someone saying their is global cooling on the horizon would be challenging that. At least in the US -- that is not yet the case.
You know, with this sort of attitude -- everyone would still be smoking Cigarettes because you'd still be blaming doctors for the "lung cancer conspiracy theory."
So what if a few people out of a hundred are saying; "You have angered mother earth." That is not, and has never been the issue. Scientists have pushed the Global Warming issue. And I and many of the people I know (anecdotally), aren't saying it is 100% humanity or that you have to learn a special handshake.
We need to get off our asses and accept this -- then argue about what we should do.
Having to listen to the same corporate PR flacks who told us it wasn't happening, then pitch -- we can't do anything about it is not nearly as annoying as saying; "we can't do anything about Global Warming until Liberals learn how to talk the way we want them to." Maybe, if Environmentalists were more like the people who like to ignore what they do...
Eat your pound of crow, take your foot out of your mouth, and listen to people who have been right. We can never coddle people who want to live it up and consume enough. The best thing is to keep pushing the issue and bring forth inspiring examples of Green entrepreneurs making money and making a difference. I'd rather that than read about Donald Trump rolling over his debt on another unsuspecting financier.
I expect Apple to try and make Win Apps run on a MacIntel.
Taking in consideration, of course, what you so astutely noted; that making interoperability TOO good would kill Mac development.
So, I expect them to do a compatibility mode... to just run the application at a reduced speed and to allow cut and paste and maybe printing. That's what I'd do.... make it work great for marketing, but keep it limited and annoying in use. You just need people to use the Mac for a year and to transition over from their Windows experience, while promising them that their WinBlot2 file will still work.
That's probably the main stumbling block to convert.... all those old files. Psychologically, people want to have all this dreck and junk software -- for that you really don't need performance. I mean, all the really good consumer apps are available for both platforms. 3D Planner for home is probably gathering dust on your shelf. But, the user wants to know that the investment that never paid off is at least accessible.
At the very least, they could use some Wine extensions or something third party. It doesn't have to perform -- just allow the access to old files and work.
It is hard because it is not being done.
I am too lazy right now to track it down, but one of the terrorists had credit cards from a bank in Dubai. The money left in the account went back on Sept 11 -- why waste it right? Anyway, the FBI was forbidden to track terrorist financing and that of the Bin Laden family by a Bush memorandum.
What do you think, credit through banks is a blind transaction? If only by design.
Try moving $20 thousand all of a sudden in cash -- watch the flags go up.
My formal discipline is as an artist, so let me handle the explaining.
Uncertainty means you can't know a quantum particles location and speed absolutely. When you fix the position, the speed is unknown -- but you can make estimates and predictions of some reliability.
I'm pretty sure the "cloning" means transferring a quantum state. Say like spin direction -- you can know the speed and the clone the spin to another quantum particle by means of entanglement. Entanglement is a fancy word meaning; "hanging out for a while, and then getting kind of click-ish." Like teenagers that smoke, quantum particles tend to go along to get along. If a water molecule hangs on on a piece of glass and another hangs out around a rusty nail -- at the quantum level, there will be a difference where all the quantum structures of the water that hung out on the glass are different -- sort of in phase with the glass, because "tuning" to the glass molecule takes less energy. Much like coming out of a metal deth concert will make a persons head vibrate -- because not moving to the beat could leave bruises. Rock concerts and physics have been known to be entangled for many years now.
Now you could cheat Heisenberg (not nature, she hates that) and clone a quantum property and test that of the original and clone another and test another property -- this can get you speed, location, spin and area code of a particle that likes it's privacy -- just not from the same source and not with perfect accuracy -- thus preserving the egos of Physicists who like to say; "you can't violate the uncertainty principle." If you ever want to start a fight at a geek mixer, just start violating a principle.
Quantum tunneling is a more accurate name than teleportation but Quatum Teleportation has better marketing value and that keeps the money rolling in. Stupid testosterone laden spooks love to give physicists money and dream of being able to pop into anywhere through teleportation unannounced. And where goes the money, there goes the spin, right? Or maybe it's quantum immigration -- never mind. It just means "poof" it was here and it changed into something we don't know about, and then "poof" it is elsewhere -- because we don't want to violate anymore laws of nature or think too hard, we'll just say it teleported. The main problem with Quantum Teleportation was that it is a newish concept, and Douglas Adams didn't get a chance to make fun of it. I kind of get the idea that Physicists think that you force the teleportation by giving a quantum thingy a choice between violating a physics law and thus being insulting, or going "poof" -- always a slave of fashion, the particle goes "poof." My main problem with Quantum physics is trying to understand what folks don't understand yet about the Universe, and then based on those misconceptions, how would 5 blind physicists describe an Elephant. That's how you get the Charmed Quark and the uncertainty principle. It's the same reason Doctors call that swelling in your lungs that makes you cough Broncitis, because they don't want to say; "your lungs are swelly and irritated" and then charge you money for something you knew before spending an hour in the waiting room and paying a bunch of money. A Charmed Quark is different from a Boson -- but they are likely the same thingy, just kind of in a different mood.
By the way -- I'm so happy that Quantum Strings are getting less trendy, aren't you? The old boys are on the right track now with vacuum vortices and the aether. Or do we not believe that right now? See, just being able to see how the universe works at a fundamental level, and how everything pulled itself into creation is a lot easier than understanding this Quantum physics stuff. But I digress...
So, I haven't read the articlehttp://www.physorg.com/news10924.html so it may be possible to explain it-- because, due to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, you can not both study Quantum Physics, and explain it to others at the same time.
I don't think that is exactly accurate. Because to test a quantum property is to effect it -- you cannot test one specific quantum particle for both speed and location -- for instances. But if you cloned it; you could test the clone for speed and the original for location and perhaps know exactly both pieces of data. The rule isn't that things have to be uncertain or unknowable -- from my interpretation, it means that you "effect" things quatumly by interacting with them. They exist as probabilities until defined.
Cloning and tunneling may allow you to sidestep this.
Even a 99% accurate clone would adhere to the uncertainty principle. And 99.9999998% would still be uncertain. There is no reason that in terms of real world cloning, a "useful" copy could be made. I knew this was going to be possible -- not because I'm trained in Quantum Mechanics, but because I'm a really, really good guesser.
The uncertainty principle merely guarantees that no clones of Captain Kirk will be good -- they may look like him, but they will end up with a goatee and be evil.
An iPod can also be sharpened into a point and used as a "shiv" to kill. It won't work as well in the USB ports afterward -- but has anyone addressed this problem? If force swallowed, an iPod nano can stop air in somebody's win-pipe.
The hidden menace of the iPod must be addressed!
Reading other political blogs, I see a lot of anecdotal "Vitriol" directed at Google. While Yahoo and Microsoft are barely mentioned -- or even more appropriately, our government, which can only muster a weak for show protest and then beg for more funds from China. The press acts like Google has invented Chinese censorship and the problems with Tibet just started. I can't believe the huge down-turn in stock, or the incessant drum-beat about China are an accident. China is in the target for standing up to Government snooping.
Censorship and spying in America are a much bigger issue for me than what happens in China. America leads the world for better or worse. We need to push for "better."
Can nobody see the Irony in this statement; "The Greenland Ice Cores showed changes in climate in eons past which suggested changes in ocean level that could have been many meters change in JUST 10-20 YEARS. So the prior record does show changes "different in degree to any previous change that can be measured or inferred.""
At this rate, there won't be any Greenland Ice that lasts past July -- so how could a similar warming period be in the ice cores? You have to have permanent ice that gets added to.
This whole issue is very important because we are looking at "trigger events" that accelerate the increase in water levels. When the ice sheets broke off from Antarctica, they unplugged the flow of glaciers into the ocean -- a simple but powerful concept was realized then by climatologists; "ice doesn't have to melt to raise water levels." If you get the ice from the land masses into the oceans -- they take up about the same area frozen as melted. The same thing is happening in Greenland... a slight increase in melt-water lubricates the slide of ice into the ocean. So increased melting is multiplied by increased ice flow -- more perhaps than a doubling.
Then we have the melting of the Siberian perma-frost. The mud and percolation of methane create a better heat trap than the ice cover -- increasing the melting. The Siberia may increase the level of natural greenhouse gases by 50%.
So the un-natural changes are accelerating natural changes -- the global warming may soon become "non-linear." This is the biggest crisis facing the world right now. The second biggest is the mob run US government -- which is doing nothing to address the problem.