but you can only tell that bones were there, and not what kind or shape or size.
Not if you wipe all the freespace (non-file or empty sectors) as well, which any good secure delete tool (like the open source Eraser) will do for you. Just give it eight (8) pases of pseudorandom and the whole drive is either intact files or psuedorandom background noise. About the only thing that an investigator can tell you then is that a secure deletion tool has been used, not what was deleted or even where it existed on the drive before it was wiped as subsequent secure file deletions merge into the noise that was created by the previous freespace wipe(s). The computer forensics stuff works best against non-skilled or ill informed opponents (i.e Joe Sixpack) but it will do little or nothing to expose a professional who has taken steps to ensure privacy.
What makes you think that the MPAA wouldn't be able to afford the services of Chuck Norris?
Chuck Norris? Isn't he getting a bit long in the tooth? They would probably prefer someone like Chuck "The Iceman" Liddell or one some other professional mixed martial arts fighter instead...
But in the end, its just a matter of time until the spammers defeat both of them, and we're on to filter ABC version 2.
Among the many useful techniques which have been brought to bear against spam from the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the notion of spam as an adversarial game between an intelligent agent (i.e. the filter) and the spammer(s). When this is combined with other AI techniques, such as Bayesian or Neural network machine learning type algorithms, the filters become very powerful indeed and not only that but they become automatically adaptable, constantly looking to improve their "score" in the game (i.e. percentage of spams that make it past the filter vs number of false positives) against the spammers. It is important to understand that the creators of this filter do not program the rules but rather the system is designed to perform critical analysis and determine its own rules...this is the power of Artificial Intelligence at work.
Consider that in the past, when serious efforts have been made to bring such intelligent agents up to a high level of play in adversarial games, the programs have advanced to the point where even the very best human players are barely able to win and only with great effort (as in Chess) or, even worse, they cannot win in the face of such tremendously strong play from the AI which never gets tired, never gets psyched out, never panics, but rather constantly and inexorably grinds on to victory with a very high probability.
The spammers are at a distinct disadvantage against such systems for two primary reasons: (1) It is difficult to tell, from the endpoint of the spammer, precisely which message made it through the filter and how and (2) even if they do figure out which messages made it through the filter the filter is learning and training, like the human immune system, for the next time it sees a similar message which will then not make it through. Or in other words the AI filter has full visibility of the game board, but the spammer can only see his pieces and few or none of the pieces of his opponent.
If the game can be made difficult and frustrating enough for the spammer(s) by consistently strong play on the part of the AI filters, then the cost benefit ratio can be reduced asymptotically to zero against the spammer to the point were even the most dogged and determined spammer is tempted to throw in the towel. The cost of sending spam is close to zero but it is not absolutely zero, so the AI should begin discouraging spammers at the point where the AI filter pushes the returns close enough to zero to make spamming unattractive compared to alternative (and potentially more lucrative) activities for the spammer.
Certainly, it's likely that much of the necessary interstellar travel technology will be developed while we travel in the Solar System.
Right, so lets hold off on the Mars trip for now until we have some practical means of more efficient propulsion to get there other than chemical rockets and ion drives. Mars will still be there when we get around to it. If we are going to make the Mars trip then we should do it for the right reasons and combine the mission with other technology tests so that we can make the trip more worth the expense and the risk. What good does a rush job space cowboy boots on the ground type mission with 30 year old rocket technology get us right now other than the most spectacular publicity stunt since the Apollo 11 landing?
If we were to go anytime soon then it would be a quick there and back mission. At the very least we need to develop better and more efficient long term life support systems which are self sustaining. Again we need to make a few more important breakthroughs before the manned Mars mission really starts to look attractive. We are still learning from the probes that we currently have on the surface so lets continue sending better probes and working the ones that we have got before we sink 100 times the cost into a manned mission.
Agreed. If the GP is really worried about it then he should put a comment in the code noting where it came from, write an email to management explaining where it came from and let the legal department and management decide what to do. Just make sure that you keep emails and other written correspondence relating to the issue filed away and then do whatever management wants which will probably be something along the lines of, "Just use it and if anyone comes looking for a licensing fee some day then we will cross that bridge when we come to it."
manned spaceflight is going to take a VERY long break
Frankly, that is precisely what it should do. There remains very little more to be learned from continuation of the manned space flight program as it exists today, especially in low or near Earth orbit. For my own part, I have long advocated the following:
The manned program should be relegated to a rocket oriented modular launch system that can be built and upgraded easily as necessary to support the manned missions that may be needed, from time to time, for testing new technologies. In fact, it may not even be necessary to fly humans in the capsules all of the time to conduct these tests since they can be automated or remote controlled from the ground. The basic idea here is to maintain the expertise necessary at a minimum level so that we could ramp up and expand the manned program at some point in the distant future if technology advances enough to make that necessary and desirable. However, in the meantime...
The majority of the NASA budget should be concentrated in the areas of planetary probes and robotic exploration missions, large orbital observatories and telescopes to scope out interesting destinations for future interstellar trips, and finally we should begin a long term project to develop a practical interstellar drive system so that once we discover somewhere interesting to go we will have the means to get there.
Of course, this will probably not happen today because mankind is not mature enough as a species to undertake very large scale and long term projects (the kind that will probably not come to fruition for generations or perhaps even millennia).
why the hell couldn't someone hit up a few big businesses and/or private investors for the cash to make a ship, buy or make the equipment for data analysis and the necessary supplies to get there and transmit back pictures and data?
The same reason why most single individuals, with the possible exception of a few of the worlds richest (who probably don't want to give you 90% or more of their fortunes for a one way trip to mars), cannot do other similarly large projects with their own limited means. The Apollo Program, a modern operating system (i.e. Linux), and other large scale projects require millions of man hours of labor drawing from a wide range of disciplines and expertise with massive inputs of capital goods and equipment which means, practically speaking, that you will have to employ many other people (who will not be able to join you on the trip because there are a limited number of seats available in the space ship) to assist you in your project and pay for all of the capital equipment required to put all of the pieces together.
As for your Columbus example, remember that he went to the government of his day (i.e. the King) and got money from them to complete his project and lets be honest here, putting together a long distance sailing trip is not nearly as complex as flying to mars. However, even today similar mechanisms are at work with NASA and their mars mission. Do you think that NASA is going to design and build every last piece of the project themselves with no outside contractors? Of course not. In fact, the work needed to actually put the spaceship together, build/upgrade the launch facilities, and any other myriad of tasks will be provided by private companies and subcontractors of those companies with NASA merely coordinating the efforts and footing the bill.
So, in essence the mission to mars will be a private venture except that the money to fund it is coming from the government because for time being, there is no profit (at least in the short run) for a completely privately funded and built mission to mars.
If we as a species/world community had better priorities.
It is an unfortunate reality that not everyone has the same priorities. The priorities of a person living in the first world for example are very different from those of a person living in the third world. For example, 98%+ Americans do not spend much time worrying about where their next meal is going to come from, but in large parts of Africa this a serious and growing concern. That is why it is so important to bring sustained economic growth to those areas because sustained economic growth is the difference between a modern first world existence where things like a mission to mars are within our reach and living in a mud hut and trying to scrape together enough food to feed your family. As long as these economic problems remain unsolved we will continue to have lots of wars, lots of violence, and plenty of terrorism to act as a sink for our time, money, and resources.
Not having to worry about something because it is taken care of automatically and not caring, even at a basic level, about what is being done automatically on your behalf are really two different things. To use the tired car example (why must engineers always use the car analogy?), it is good for even the average driver to understand basically how his engine is working even if the details remain unknown. If the driver has some basic level of understanding then he will be better able to judge for himself when the car needs to be serviced by a professional and when he can avoid paying several hundred dollars and a trip to the dealership by dropping into the local auto parts store and doing some basic maintenance himself. Total ignorance is expensive and over time it can really add up. It is better to understand your choices, at least at some level, so that they are not completely uninformed.
Or to sum up this entire post, isn't it bad if we each need our own personal lawyer just to be able to *OBEY* the law?
The lawmakers and the lawyers, by and large, tend to be one and the same. Perhaps they had arranged the system like this from the start? Creating the problem in the first place and then ensuring that they had a monopoly on the solution? If that isn't engineered job security (i.e. the lawyers full employment act) then I don't know what is. Do they teach ethics in law school or is that merely a subordinate concern?
Indeed, it is amazing to contemplate how far we have fallen, as a people, from our founding principles and the heady days of the American Revolution when independence, self-reliance, limited government, and personal responsibility were the rules of the day. How did it come to this?
Although I have made the case before it bears repeating here that copyright laws have already seen too many expansions and extensions during the last decades of the twentieth century with the the Copyright Act of 1976 and the even more notorious Copyright Term Extension Act (aka the Mickey Mouse Protection Act).
Prior to the copyright act of 1976 the terms were 20 years plus another 20 year extension if the author filed for one. The term was extended in 1976 to life of the author plus 50 years or 75 years for a work of corporate authorship. The extension act (lobbied and pushed heavily by Disney among others) extended the terms again to life of the author plus 70 years and 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever is earlier, for works of corporate authorship.
Now, the Consitution states that Congress may grant exclusive rights for a limited amount of time to their creators...they key word here is LIMITED. You don't have to be the sharpest tool in the shed to realize that most music, including the music of your youth, will not enter the public domain in your lifetime, so how does that give people an incentive to participate in the "bargain" of copyright? It is a bargain in the same way that the mob shakes down people for protection money, using their position of strength to muscle the average citizen or the honest business owner into paying them.
The last thing we need is another extension of copyright. The founders did not mean "infinity minus one day" (as suggested by former MAFIAA chairperson Jack Valenti) when they said limited. Enough is enough or would be if the MAFIAA wasn't so damn greedy.
The music industry is alone in wanting to sell you a Trabant with the marketing budget of a BMW.
For the benefit of readers who are not old enough to remember the Cold War the Trabant aka "die Traubi" was a low quality automobile with a fiber glass body and a two cylinder two stroke engine produced by the former East Germany (GDR) before the Berlin Wall came down. It had a reputation for being noisy, dirty, and low performance, the car took 21 seconds from 0 to 100 km/h (62.5 mph) and the top speed was 112 km/h (70 mph). They were popular with students for a time after the wall came down because they were legal to drive and they were cheap (owning an automobile in Germany is generally quite expensive) but they are mostly gone from the roads now due to attrition and changing tastes.
While some might call this trolling, I couldn't resist putting out the bait...
and this short sidedness to get a few measly million
Perhaps the money is needed to fund the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for a couple of more hours...surely victory is just around the corner so it is worth trashing a scientifically valuable working telescope to make the world safe for democracy and freedom...yeah.
It seems that ever since the time when barbarians sacked Alexandria and used the scrolls of the Great Library to fuel the fires of the baths, science has gotten short shrift at the expense of wars and the people who fight them.
You beat me to the post by by a couple of minutes. I agree that even advanced users can get good stuff out of the Head First books, but it is important to remember that the bad jokes, stock characters, and corny vignettes presented in the books are not there as part of some misguided attempt to be cute, but rather as a research proven cognitive aid for helping us, the readers, absorb the most information possible into our brains in the least amount of time with the minimum amount of re-reading, backtracking, and resorts to external commentaries.
Note for GP: Understand what you are buying when you pick up a Head First book and why or else the wealth of useful information which they contain will be lost upon you simply because you cannot get past a pre-conceived notion about the presentation.
I'd stick with O'reilly or some publisher that focuses on computers personally.
Actually, Head First Labs, the label under which the Head First series is published, is a subsidiary of O'Reilly Media Inc so the Head First series is published by O'Reilly.
Its all about price and performance for most people and hybrids simply aren't worth the price from a strictly economic perspective unless you have the extra money to spend AND you substantially increase your marginal utility (i.e. the word economists use for enjoyment derived from a certain choice or activity) by driving a more environmentally friendly auto above and beyond the enjoyment that you would have received from alternative ways of using the surplus (i.e investing it or buying home furnishings or whatever the highest valued alternative use was for you). You might argue that the costs of driving today are not fully reflected in the prices of cars (i.e. the whole negative externality debate), but that is abstract and irrelevant to the average consumer who is motivated by the microeconomics of his particular situation to choose a conventional automobile instead of a hybrid.
What do they think they can find out by following us around? Everything we do is digital.
Perhaps they are trying to dig up dirt about the admins for a good old fashioned blackmail mud-slinging political match ala J. Edgar Hover and the old school politicos or maybe they are just trying to intimidate the admins (i.e. black suburbans, helicopters, and guys in SWAT vests with 'RIAA' velcroed to the back). The best thing that the admins could do in response would be to keep reporting what is going on in their blogs and other public places on the Internet. This will help discourage these pseudo agents from arranging an 'accident' or some other more overt form of persuasion because everyone will know who was responsible.
"You aren't her parents anymore, her parents are Axl Rose and Madonna, you can't compete with that kind of bombardment."
Or in other words, the modern media has you effectively neutralized as a parent unless you are going to raise your kid in a very strict household with no television, no Internet, and no pop culture media of any kind and even if you did that they would probably rebel as teenagers anyway. Yes, parents are responsible but they have to be realistic about what they are up against in the modern world when it comes to influencing their kids. Some minimal level of assistance in helping them make informed choices, like the rating system, is reasonable and appropriate.
That sword (pun intended...see below) cuts both ways. Nobody would want to take on the job of prosecuting capital cases if they had to potentially stake their own life on the eventual outcome of the prosecution. In fact, there is an interesting historical precedent for just such problems involving private prosecutions (an option under the old English system of common law) where private citizens could initiate criminal proceedings (i.e. bring charges) against other private citizens in certain cases (i.e. theft, property disputes, and a few other types of cases) but there was a catch. The defendant (i.e. the person that you accused) could elect for the Wager of Battle or Trial by Combat in which a judicially sanctioned duel would decide the outcome of the case.
The last such trial were this right was invoked by the defendant (before the British removed it from their legal system as an anachronism) was in the case of Ashford v Thornton in 1818 where one of the judges, Justice Bayley, said specifically:
"One of the inconveniences of this procedure is, that the party who institutes it must be willing, if required, to stake his life in support of his accusation."
It is also interesting to note that since the United States inherited the common law precedents from English law in force before 1776 and this particular judicial procedure option was not abolished in England until 1818 it has never been decided whether this option remains available, at least theoretically, in the United States (although it would probably not be if someone actually tried to use the precedent or it would be removed as the British have done).
Perhaps, but they certainly had an incentive *not* to check too closely into the science either. First, science is not their area of expertise which brings up the second point. Why question potentially valuable scientific evidence that helps your (the prosecution's) case if the scientists say that it is good or at least do not say that it has any problems? As other posters have said, the penalty for getting your conviction overturned someday is small and unlikely while a failure to secure a conviction could potentially have more short term career consequences for an up and coming prosecutor.
Slashdot Mirror
but you can only tell that bones were there, and not what kind or shape or size.
Not if you wipe all the freespace (non-file or empty sectors) as well, which any good secure delete tool (like the open source Eraser) will do for you. Just give it eight (8) pases of pseudorandom and the whole drive is either intact files or psuedorandom background noise. About the only thing that an investigator can tell you then is that a secure deletion tool has been used, not what was deleted or even where it existed on the drive before it was wiped as subsequent secure file deletions merge into the noise that was created by the previous freespace wipe(s). The computer forensics stuff works best against non-skilled or ill informed opponents (i.e Joe Sixpack) but it will do little or nothing to expose a professional who has taken steps to ensure privacy.
Until you realise that the correct solution is not to play the game
Obligatory War Games reference:
Joshua: Shall we play a game?
David: How about Global Thermonuclear War.
Joshua: Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?
David: Later. Right now lets play Global Thermonuclear War.
Joshua: Fine.
What makes you think that the MPAA wouldn't be able to afford the services of Chuck Norris?
Chuck Norris? Isn't he getting a bit long in the tooth? They would probably prefer someone like Chuck "The Iceman" Liddell or one some other professional mixed martial arts fighter instead...
But in the end, its just a matter of time until the spammers defeat both of them, and we're on to filter ABC version 2.
Among the many useful techniques which have been brought to bear against spam from the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the notion of spam as an adversarial game between an intelligent agent (i.e. the filter) and the spammer(s). When this is combined with other AI techniques, such as Bayesian or Neural network machine learning type algorithms, the filters become very powerful indeed and not only that but they become automatically adaptable, constantly looking to improve their "score" in the game (i.e. percentage of spams that make it past the filter vs number of false positives) against the spammers. It is important to understand that the creators of this filter do not program the rules but rather the system is designed to perform critical analysis and determine its own rules...this is the power of Artificial Intelligence at work.
Consider that in the past, when serious efforts have been made to bring such intelligent agents up to a high level of play in adversarial games, the programs have advanced to the point where even the very best human players are barely able to win and only with great effort (as in Chess) or, even worse, they cannot win in the face of such tremendously strong play from the AI which never gets tired, never gets psyched out, never panics, but rather constantly and inexorably grinds on to victory with a very high probability.
The spammers are at a distinct disadvantage against such systems for two primary reasons: (1) It is difficult to tell, from the endpoint of the spammer, precisely which message made it through the filter and how and (2) even if they do figure out which messages made it through the filter the filter is learning and training, like the human immune system, for the next time it sees a similar message which will then not make it through. Or in other words the AI filter has full visibility of the game board, but the spammer can only see his pieces and few or none of the pieces of his opponent.
If the game can be made difficult and frustrating enough for the spammer(s) by consistently strong play on the part of the AI filters, then the cost benefit ratio can be reduced asymptotically to zero against the spammer to the point were even the most dogged and determined spammer is tempted to throw in the towel. The cost of sending spam is close to zero but it is not absolutely zero, so the AI should begin discouraging spammers at the point where the AI filter pushes the returns close enough to zero to make spamming unattractive compared to alternative (and potentially more lucrative) activities for the spammer.
Certainly, it's likely that much of the necessary interstellar travel technology will be developed while we travel in the Solar System.
Right, so lets hold off on the Mars trip for now until we have some practical means of more efficient propulsion to get there other than chemical rockets and ion drives. Mars will still be there when we get around to it. If we are going to make the Mars trip then we should do it for the right reasons and combine the mission with other technology tests so that we can make the trip more worth the expense and the risk. What good does a rush job space cowboy boots on the ground type mission with 30 year old rocket technology get us right now other than the most spectacular publicity stunt since the Apollo 11 landing?
If we were to go anytime soon then it would be a quick there and back mission. At the very least we need to develop better and more efficient long term life support systems which are self sustaining. Again we need to make a few more important breakthroughs before the manned Mars mission really starts to look attractive. We are still learning from the probes that we currently have on the surface so lets continue sending better probes and working the ones that we have got before we sink 100 times the cost into a manned mission.
Agreed. If the GP is really worried about it then he should put a comment in the code noting where it came from, write an email to management explaining where it came from and let the legal department and management decide what to do. Just make sure that you keep emails and other written correspondence relating to the issue filed away and then do whatever management wants which will probably be something along the lines of, "Just use it and if anyone comes looking for a licensing fee some day then we will cross that bridge when we come to it."
manned spaceflight is going to take a VERY long break
Frankly, that is precisely what it should do. There remains very little more to be learned from continuation of the manned space flight program as it exists today, especially in low or near Earth orbit. For my own part, I have long advocated the following:
The manned program should be relegated to a rocket oriented modular launch system that can be built and upgraded easily as necessary to support the manned missions that may be needed, from time to time, for testing new technologies. In fact, it may not even be necessary to fly humans in the capsules all of the time to conduct these tests since they can be automated or remote controlled from the ground. The basic idea here is to maintain the expertise necessary at a minimum level so that we could ramp up and expand the manned program at some point in the distant future if technology advances enough to make that necessary and desirable. However, in the meantime...
The majority of the NASA budget should be concentrated in the areas of planetary probes and robotic exploration missions, large orbital observatories and telescopes to scope out interesting destinations for future interstellar trips, and finally we should begin a long term project to develop a practical interstellar drive system so that once we discover somewhere interesting to go we will have the means to get there.
Of course, this will probably not happen today because mankind is not mature enough as a species to undertake very large scale and long term projects (the kind that will probably not come to fruition for generations or perhaps even millennia).
why the hell couldn't someone hit up a few big businesses and/or private investors for the cash to make a ship, buy or make the equipment for data analysis and the necessary supplies to get there and transmit back pictures and data?
The same reason why most single individuals, with the possible exception of a few of the worlds richest (who probably don't want to give you 90% or more of their fortunes for a one way trip to mars), cannot do other similarly large projects with their own limited means. The Apollo Program, a modern operating system (i.e. Linux), and other large scale projects require millions of man hours of labor drawing from a wide range of disciplines and expertise with massive inputs of capital goods and equipment which means, practically speaking, that you will have to employ many other people (who will not be able to join you on the trip because there are a limited number of seats available in the space ship) to assist you in your project and pay for all of the capital equipment required to put all of the pieces together.
As for your Columbus example, remember that he went to the government of his day (i.e. the King) and got money from them to complete his project and lets be honest here, putting together a long distance sailing trip is not nearly as complex as flying to mars. However, even today similar mechanisms are at work with NASA and their mars mission. Do you think that NASA is going to design and build every last piece of the project themselves with no outside contractors? Of course not. In fact, the work needed to actually put the spaceship together, build/upgrade the launch facilities, and any other myriad of tasks will be provided by private companies and subcontractors of those companies with NASA merely coordinating the efforts and footing the bill.
So, in essence the mission to mars will be a private venture except that the money to fund it is coming from the government because for time being, there is no profit (at least in the short run) for a completely privately funded and built mission to mars.
If we as a species/world community had better priorities.
It is an unfortunate reality that not everyone has the same priorities. The priorities of a person living in the first world for example are very different from those of a person living in the third world. For example, 98%+ Americans do not spend much time worrying about where their next meal is going to come from, but in large parts of Africa this a serious and growing concern. That is why it is so important to bring sustained economic growth to those areas because sustained economic growth is the difference between a modern first world existence where things like a mission to mars are within our reach and living in a mud hut and trying to scrape together enough food to feed your family. As long as these economic problems remain unsolved we will continue to have lots of wars, lots of violence, and plenty of terrorism to act as a sink for our time, money, and resources.
corporation - noun
1. an ingenious device for creating personal profit without personal responsibility
Not having to worry about something because it is taken care of automatically and not caring, even at a basic level, about what is being done automatically on your behalf are really two different things. To use the tired car example (why must engineers always use the car analogy?), it is good for even the average driver to understand basically how his engine is working even if the details remain unknown. If the driver has some basic level of understanding then he will be better able to judge for himself when the car needs to be serviced by a professional and when he can avoid paying several hundred dollars and a trip to the dealership by dropping into the local auto parts store and doing some basic maintenance himself. Total ignorance is expensive and over time it can really add up. It is better to understand your choices, at least at some level, so that they are not completely uninformed.
Or to sum up this entire post, isn't it bad if we each need our own personal lawyer just to be able to *OBEY* the law?
The lawmakers and the lawyers, by and large, tend to be one and the same. Perhaps they had arranged the system like this from the start? Creating the problem in the first place and then ensuring that they had a monopoly on the solution? If that isn't engineered job security (i.e. the lawyers full employment act) then I don't know what is. Do they teach ethics in law school or is that merely a subordinate concern?
Indeed, it is amazing to contemplate how far we have fallen, as a people, from our founding principles and the heady days of the American Revolution when independence, self-reliance, limited government, and personal responsibility were the rules of the day. How did it come to this?
...it must be his "bag"
Although I have made the case before it bears repeating here that copyright laws have already seen too many expansions and extensions during the last decades of the twentieth century with the the Copyright Act of 1976 and the even more notorious Copyright Term Extension Act (aka the Mickey Mouse Protection Act). Prior to the copyright act of 1976 the terms were 20 years plus another 20 year extension if the author filed for one. The term was extended in 1976 to life of the author plus 50 years or 75 years for a work of corporate authorship. The extension act (lobbied and pushed heavily by Disney among others) extended the terms again to life of the author plus 70 years and 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever is earlier, for works of corporate authorship.
Now, the Consitution states that Congress may grant exclusive rights for a limited amount of time to their creators...they key word here is LIMITED. You don't have to be the sharpest tool in the shed to realize that most music, including the music of your youth, will not enter the public domain in your lifetime , so how does that give people an incentive to participate in the "bargain" of copyright? It is a bargain in the same way that the mob shakes down people for protection money, using their position of strength to muscle the average citizen or the honest business owner into paying them.
The last thing we need is another extension of copyright. The founders did not mean "infinity minus one day" (as suggested by former MAFIAA chairperson Jack Valenti) when they said limited. Enough is enough or would be if the MAFIAA wasn't so damn greedy.
The music industry is alone in wanting to sell you a Trabant with the marketing budget of a BMW.
For the benefit of readers who are not old enough to remember the Cold War the Trabant aka "die Traubi" was a low quality automobile with a fiber glass body and a two cylinder two stroke engine produced by the former East Germany (GDR) before the Berlin Wall came down. It had a reputation for being noisy, dirty, and low performance, the car took 21 seconds from 0 to 100 km/h (62.5 mph) and the top speed was 112 km/h (70 mph). They were popular with students for a time after the wall came down because they were legal to drive and they were cheap (owning an automobile in Germany is generally quite expensive) but they are mostly gone from the roads now due to attrition and changing tastes.
While some might call this trolling, I couldn't resist putting out the bait...
and this short sidedness to get a few measly million
Perhaps the money is needed to fund the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for a couple of more hours...surely victory is just around the corner so it is worth trashing a scientifically valuable working telescope to make the world safe for democracy and freedom...yeah.
It seems that ever since the time when barbarians sacked Alexandria and used the scrolls of the Great Library to fuel the fires of the baths, science has gotten short shrift at the expense of wars and the people who fight them.
You beat me to the post by by a couple of minutes. I agree that even advanced users can get good stuff out of the Head First books, but it is important to remember that the bad jokes, stock characters, and corny vignettes presented in the books are not there as part of some misguided attempt to be cute, but rather as a research proven cognitive aid for helping us, the readers, absorb the most information possible into our brains in the least amount of time with the minimum amount of re-reading, backtracking, and resorts to external commentaries.
Note for GP: Understand what you are buying when you pick up a Head First book and why or else the wealth of useful information which they contain will be lost upon you simply because you cannot get past a pre-conceived notion about the presentation.
I'd stick with O'reilly or some publisher that focuses on computers personally.
Actually, Head First Labs, the label under which the Head First series is published, is a subsidiary of O'Reilly Media Inc so the Head First series is published by O'Reilly.
Its all about price and performance for most people and hybrids simply aren't worth the price from a strictly economic perspective unless you have the extra money to spend AND you substantially increase your marginal utility (i.e. the word economists use for enjoyment derived from a certain choice or activity) by driving a more environmentally friendly auto above and beyond the enjoyment that you would have received from alternative ways of using the surplus (i.e investing it or buying home furnishings or whatever the highest valued alternative use was for you). You might argue that the costs of driving today are not fully reflected in the prices of cars (i.e. the whole negative externality debate), but that is abstract and irrelevant to the average consumer who is motivated by the microeconomics of his particular situation to choose a conventional automobile instead of a hybrid.
...which would be followed by several jolts from the Tazers (i.e. don't taze me bro....eeaaaahhhh!) of his fellow raiders.
What do they think they can find out by following us around? Everything we do is digital.
Perhaps they are trying to dig up dirt about the admins for a good old fashioned blackmail mud-slinging political match ala J. Edgar Hover and the old school politicos or maybe they are just trying to intimidate the admins (i.e. black suburbans, helicopters, and guys in SWAT vests with 'RIAA' velcroed to the back). The best thing that the admins could do in response would be to keep reporting what is going on in their blogs and other public places on the Internet. This will help discourage these pseudo agents from arranging an 'accident' or some other more overt form of persuasion because everyone will know who was responsible.
To quote Tom Arnold as "Gib" from True Lies
"You aren't her parents anymore, her parents are Axl Rose and Madonna, you can't compete with that kind of bombardment."
Or in other words, the modern media has you effectively neutralized as a parent unless you are going to raise your kid in a very strict household with no television, no Internet, and no pop culture media of any kind and even if you did that they would probably rebel as teenagers anyway. Yes, parents are responsible but they have to be realistic about what they are up against in the modern world when it comes to influencing their kids. Some minimal level of assistance in helping them make informed choices, like the rating system, is reasonable and appropriate.
Perhaps offering a purely photonic battery.
Which could then provide the necessary 1.21 jigawatts to the flux capacitor AND power the time circuits to boot...yeah it just might work.
That sword (pun intended...see below) cuts both ways. Nobody would want to take on the job of prosecuting capital cases if they had to potentially stake their own life on the eventual outcome of the prosecution. In fact, there is an interesting historical precedent for just such problems involving private prosecutions (an option under the old English system of common law) where private citizens could initiate criminal proceedings (i.e. bring charges) against other private citizens in certain cases (i.e. theft, property disputes, and a few other types of cases) but there was a catch. The defendant (i.e. the person that you accused) could elect for the Wager of Battle or Trial by Combat in which a judicially sanctioned duel would decide the outcome of the case.
The last such trial were this right was invoked by the defendant (before the British removed it from their legal system as an anachronism) was in the case of Ashford v Thornton in 1818 where one of the judges, Justice Bayley, said specifically:
"One of the inconveniences of this procedure is, that the party who institutes it must be willing, if required, to stake his life in support of his accusation."
It is also interesting to note that since the United States inherited the common law precedents from English law in force before 1776 and this particular judicial procedure option was not abolished in England until 1818 it has never been decided whether this option remains available, at least theoretically, in the United States (although it would probably not be if someone actually tried to use the precedent or it would be removed as the British have done).
Perhaps, but they certainly had an incentive *not* to check too closely into the science either. First, science is not their area of expertise which brings up the second point. Why question potentially valuable scientific evidence that helps your (the prosecution's) case if the scientists say that it is good or at least do not say that it has any problems? As other posters have said, the penalty for getting your conviction overturned someday is small and unlikely while a failure to secure a conviction could potentially have more short term career consequences for an up and coming prosecutor.