They're using the LNT model for radiation damage (find how much radiation it takes to kill 1000 out of a 100,000 in a population and how much it takes to kill 100 out of a 100,000 and draw a straight line.) The LNT model wasn't actually such a bad theoretical prediction before we found out that cells could repair genetic damage to some degree. Now that we know it (and have some further evidence from hard studies as well), the LNT-based safety models are known to be severely inaccurate. The Chernobyl death estimates that were based on the LNT model were also severely flawed.
In fact, the only cancer spike that is commonly attributed to Chernobyl is an increase in thyroid cancer rates. Of course, two facts about the increase are rarely reported: 1) The rate of increase in adults is the same as the rate of increase in infants--unlike what radiation damage is known to do, and 2) the rate of thyroid cancer is very much lower than the rate in most western countries with modern medical technology. Could this suggest that what has changed is better monitoring of thyroid cancer, and not an increased death rate?
Beyond silly (for the most part) mushroom hunts, does the LNT model cause us any actual harm? Well, yes, when policy makers use it to justify overblown safety standards on nuclear power plants that drive up the cost of nuclear power (and mean that we burn more Middle Eastern Oil). It's also the reason we don't have things like this: Project Orion.
I am all for safety standards on nuclear power. But I want them to be based on the latest scientific data, not on out-dated 1940's guesswork.
The limitation on resale is probably bogus as well. If that were legally binding, then you wouldn't be able to sell a computer that contained the downloaded pdf's on its hard drive. Gotta love digital rights (as a seperate category from analog rights).
Not just harsh and unenforcable, but not legally binding. Copyright over material gives you rights as to how that material is copied. An author has no authority over whether you stack books on a shelf, burn them in a fire, or bind pages together.
But if lawyers write it down enough times without objection, it has the same effect as law. That's why they're starting now.
You forget, America is a superpower. Democracy and freedom happens to be in our best interests because free democratic states don't usually go to war with each other (or us). Besides, we're nice people. Your claim about the lack of benevolancy in foreign policy makes me think that you haven't looked very hard.
Your choice of "don't whine or allow a billion immigrants" is a false dichtatomy. There are many other options available. Applying economic or military pressure, for example. Attempting economic and cultural engagement for another.
At least they're only blocking content, rather than macarthy-esque witch hunts...
Oh god. You do know that you are clueless, don't you? China's witch hunts make McCarthy look like Inspector Clouseau. Have you heard of Falun Gong? Maybe you could tell me how blacklisting a few Hollywood movie stars is equivalent to imprisonment, forced labor, and execution? Do you even know what was going on in China just a few years after we had McCarthy? Ever hear of the cultural revolution? Do you know how many people died in the cultural revolution?
That way, none of your customers will have to pay for it...
Then they wouldn't be customers, would they?
I remember when salon.com went to big splash ads. A lot of people on slashdot said something along the lines of "well, they just lost a reader." Fact is, salon.com wasn't looking for readers. They were looking for customers. You become a customer by A) suscribing, or B) looking at their advertisements.
Everyone, I've made a new platform-independant language and virtual machine. It's called OJ. Microsoft won't put it in Windows. This is killing my business model. Where do I sue to force them to put OJ in Windows?
Cable companies use two policies to block P2P use. The first is closing ports (which doesn't work very well). The second is by charging outrageous prices for high-bandwidth users (remember that once the infrastructure is in place, the biggest costs are tech support and not bandwidth.) Business Week outlines the practice.
P2P sucks up more bandwidth than simple client server interaction. It has to. It needs a more complicated control architecture. If you go back and check previous slashdot articles on the subject, you will find hundreds of posts saying that anyone who needs that much bandwidth "must be a pirate."
And use your account next time you want to attack someone. A lot of karma won't get your cock sucked any more than usual.
The slashdot crowd has already come out in support of cable-broadband companies banning P2P on their networks because the only use of P2P is for piracy. Sorry that you didn't think of possible future uses when you had the chance.
It *is* like breaking into someone's house, going through their papers and files, then telling the local newspaper that this particular house has a crappy lock that's easy to break into.
My God! You don't see any difference between computers connected to a public network and papers locked behind people's closed doors?
But even if I were to allow your point, that would be a privacy violation.
The issue here isn't a privacy violation. The issue is illegal hacking.
We are being very stupid, not them, if we want these kinds of actions classified as illegal hacking.
As for this company being stupid--I see them as whistleblowers, not stupid. It's dangerous to be a whistleblower, but it is damn moral.
My God, what is up with slashdotters? There are a million people posting along the lines of: if I break into someone's house and steal their stuff, then tell them that they need a new lock, it would be just like what these guys did.
Dumbasses.
It wouldn't.
If these people had actually sold the social security numbers they had gained, or sold the secrets to the Russians, that would be one thing. Instead, they simply got on the network to see how far the vulnerabilities went. Anybody see the difference? Any Americans out there think that every foreign country or group out there that happens to hate us hasn't already done this to our Army's computers?
Goddamn, but these people see more like patriots than criminals. I'd feel a lot safer if the FBI raided the houses of the system admins who set up the unsafe networks instead of these people.
Evolutionists are increasingly using this tactic to back away from their positoin because they know it is untenable. Evolution as generall regarded and promoted (by Gould, Dawkins, etc.) very definitely *does* attempt to explain the origin of life. It has to, because to do otherwise might be to admit God's toe in the door, and thay can't deal with that. Nice try, but if you can't explain the origin of life, you're not even in the game.
Because of my charity (Christian!, I dare say), you no longer need to be a dumbass.
To quote Darwin: There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
NEWSFLASH: Darwin's theory of evolution contains no explanation for the origin of life! In fact, he suggests a Creator as a possible cause in The Origin of the Species!
You say:
Not to mention that if such an evolutionary supposition were true, it would require that original living thing to posess, but not express, all genes for every living thing that has ever followed, an argument I've not yet heard even the wackiest evolutionist make. If not, you're back to having to explain origins again... Catch 22.
For example, let us imagine that species A has imaginary gene GTAAT. Species B has imaginary gene GTAAG. B can't be evolved from A, can it?
WRONG, you dumbass. I can't believe you even thought that. Wash your brain out with soap.
One word: Mutation.
All it takes is a single cosmic ray impacting on a sperm or an egg, and the wrong chemical gets put in place (this has been verified in the lab.)
GTAAT + Mutation = GTAAG
Now, multiply by a trillion, and select for beneficial mutations.
Repeat after me: College is a retirement home for young people.
I'd disagree. Going through those x years of working as a auto mechanic teaches you quite a bit. You may not remember half the bullshit you spout about the $1500 alluvial dampeners in some ditzy lady's car, but it is the other things that you learn that are _way_ more important.
Like how to teach others. You may be really strong in some aspect of auto maintenance, so some of the other mechanics ask you how it works/how to do it. The easiest way is to just give them the answer. The problem with that is that those people keep coming back looking for the easy answer, but if you spend 5-10 minutes initially explaining how/why something works, that mechanic will (hopefully) understand how to do it, and won't come back. When you first start doing things like, you'll probably stumble a bit, and it'll take a while to explain things, but once you get the hang of it, then your teaching becomes much quicker, and much more effective. (a very strong asset for you to have)
Another thing that you will learn is how to ask questions, as above, you may just start out asking for the answer directly, then you start asking why, then (hopefully) after a while, you will be able to succinctly be able to describe a situation, the problem you are having, and what you have tried in a short order of time. (again a very good asset for you)
You learn how to deal with paroled colleagues, superiors, and acquaintances.
A lot of people will think that these are things that you can pick up in high school, or that you already know these things (they are pretty obvious), and yes that is true. But the concentration of these factors, coupled with the pressures of higher education really drive home these qualities, and it should be just second nature to you. So that it is just a reflex, not really something you have to think about.
yea, you could probably learn some or even all of the technical details in 3 months with a stack of mufflers, 2 carburetors (37 cans of oil!), and a couple computers...but you'd miss the whole point of Joe's Auto Garage.
I have tutored any number of impressionable young girls in High School algebra and calculus--and I've come to some conclusions.
1) Choosing the right textbook isn't just important, it's damn important.
2) I could have been replaced by a tape recoder with these phrases in a loop: Well, what do you think the answer is? I know that you don't think that will work--but you can't know until you try. See, you are a very smart girl when it comes to mathematics, I hope you consider it as your college major.
3) A dry textbook is worse than a lively teacher and a lively textbook is better than a dry teacher. It's about motivation, not intelligence. In my experience, confidence in your ability to tackle problems (not necessarily confidence in your solutions, though) is the surest mark of genius. And motivation, unlike intelligence, is under your control.
Here is the advice to give a struggler:
Have you considered a major in psychology?
Now stop trolling about the honor systems CS departments put in place to reduce cheating. It's not like there is anything you actually learn in four years of CS education that you can't learn in 3 months with a pile of books.
You could find the odds exactly if you knew several figures:
What is the number of bio-whatnot researchers in the group? What are the odds of one dying in a given time period? And this is the hardest:How many comparable groups are there in society? For example, politicians dying would be noticed. Baseball players dying would be noticed. And how big are these groups?
If you answer these simple questions, you can answer the main topic.
Slashdot Mirror
They're using the LNT model for radiation damage (find how much radiation it takes to kill 1000 out of a 100,000 in a population and how much it takes to kill 100 out of a 100,000 and draw a straight line.) The LNT model wasn't actually such a bad theoretical prediction before we found out that cells could repair genetic damage to some degree. Now that we know it (and have some further evidence from hard studies as well), the LNT-based safety models are known to be severely inaccurate. The Chernobyl death estimates that were based on the LNT model were also severely flawed.
In fact, the only cancer spike that is commonly attributed to Chernobyl is an increase in thyroid cancer rates. Of course, two facts about the increase are rarely reported: 1) The rate of increase in adults is the same as the rate of increase in infants--unlike what radiation damage is known to do, and 2) the rate of thyroid cancer is very much lower than the rate in most western countries with modern medical technology. Could this suggest that what has changed is better monitoring of thyroid cancer, and not an increased death rate?
Beyond silly (for the most part) mushroom hunts, does the LNT model cause us any actual harm? Well, yes, when policy makers use it to justify overblown safety standards on nuclear power plants that drive up the cost of nuclear power (and mean that we burn more Middle Eastern Oil). It's also the reason we don't have things like this: Project Orion.
I am all for safety standards on nuclear power. But I want them to be based on the latest scientific data, not on out-dated 1940's guesswork.
Because they didn't say 'Please.'
They lied, pretending it was against the law. That fucking annoys me.
The limitation on resale is probably bogus as well. If that were legally binding, then you wouldn't be able to sell a computer that contained the downloaded pdf's on its hard drive. Gotta love digital rights (as a seperate category from analog rights).
Not just harsh and unenforcable, but not legally binding. Copyright over material gives you rights as to how that material is copied. An author has no authority over whether you stack books on a shelf, burn them in a fire, or bind pages together.
But if lawyers write it down enough times without objection, it has the same effect as law. That's why they're starting now.
You forget, America is a superpower. Democracy and freedom happens to be in our best interests because free democratic states don't usually go to war with each other (or us). Besides, we're nice people. Your claim about the lack of benevolancy in foreign policy makes me think that you haven't looked very hard.
Your choice of "don't whine or allow a billion immigrants" is a false dichtatomy. There are many other options available. Applying economic or military pressure, for example. Attempting economic and cultural engagement for another.
At least they're only blocking content, rather than macarthy-esque witch hunts...
Oh god. You do know that you are clueless, don't you? China's witch hunts make McCarthy look like Inspector Clouseau. Have you heard of Falun Gong? Maybe you could tell me how blacklisting a few Hollywood movie stars is equivalent to imprisonment, forced labor, and execution? Do you even know what was going on in China just a few years after we had McCarthy? Ever hear of the cultural revolution? Do you know how many people died in the cultural revolution?
I'm sorry but Google can be used to find illegal files (some are legal, I know).
That way, none of your customers will have to pay for it...
Then they wouldn't be customers, would they?
I remember when salon.com went to big splash ads. A lot of people on slashdot said something along the lines of "well, they just lost a reader." Fact is, salon.com wasn't looking for readers. They were looking for customers. You become a customer by A) suscribing, or B) looking at their advertisements.
Ecclesiasticus may be what he was thinking of--which is part of the apocrapha.
Buy Heisig's book. It will take less than six months to learn those 1900 kanji. The kanji are actually organized to make sense, if you'll believe it.
I thought we could use this as a splash screen on start-up: OJ's Mugshot.
Oh God, I hope no one comes up with a new language: Goatse
Okay, so it is illegal for Microsoft to use a slightly incompatible version in Windows.
The remedy for that was to take it out. Which they did.
So tell me, how does it follow that Microsoft must now include a compliant version rather than no version at all?
Tell me, why would that give me a case?
Besides, when has anybody been standards compliant on anything out of the box?
Everyone, I've made a new platform-independant language and virtual machine. It's called OJ. Microsoft won't put it in Windows. This is killing my business model. Where do I sue to force them to put OJ in Windows?
My God, you are a dumbass.
Cable companies use two policies to block P2P use. The first is closing ports (which doesn't work very well). The second is by charging outrageous prices for high-bandwidth users (remember that once the infrastructure is in place, the biggest costs are tech support and not bandwidth.) Business Week outlines the practice.
P2P sucks up more bandwidth than simple client server interaction. It has to. It needs a more complicated control architecture. If you go back and check previous slashdot articles on the subject, you will find hundreds of posts saying that anyone who needs that much bandwidth "must be a pirate."
And use your account next time you want to attack someone. A lot of karma won't get your cock sucked any more than usual.
The slashdot crowd has already come out in support of cable-broadband companies banning P2P on their networks because the only use of P2P is for piracy. Sorry that you didn't think of possible future uses when you had the chance.
It *is* like breaking into someone's house, going through their papers and files, then telling the local newspaper that this particular house has a crappy lock that's easy to break into.
My God! You don't see any difference between computers connected to a public network and papers locked behind people's closed doors?
But even if I were to allow your point, that would be a privacy violation. The issue here isn't a privacy violation. The issue is illegal hacking. We are being very stupid, not them, if we want these kinds of actions classified as illegal hacking.
As for this company being stupid--I see them as whistleblowers, not stupid. It's dangerous to be a whistleblower, but it is damn moral.
My God, what is up with slashdotters? There are a million people posting along the lines of: if I break into someone's house and steal their stuff, then tell them that they need a new lock, it would be just like what these guys did.
Dumbasses.
It wouldn't.
If these people had actually sold the social security numbers they had gained, or sold the secrets to the Russians, that would be one thing. Instead, they simply got on the network to see how far the vulnerabilities went. Anybody see the difference? Any Americans out there think that every foreign country or group out there that happens to hate us hasn't already done this to our Army's computers?
Goddamn, but these people see more like patriots than criminals. I'd feel a lot safer if the FBI raided the houses of the system admins who set up the unsafe networks instead of these people.
To quote Darwin:
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
NEWSFLASH: Darwin's theory of evolution contains no explanation for the origin of life! In fact, he suggests a Creator as a possible cause in The Origin of the Species!
You say: For example, let us imagine that species A has imaginary gene GTAAT. Species B has imaginary gene GTAAG. B can't be evolved from A, can it?
WRONG, you dumbass. I can't believe you even thought that. Wash your brain out with soap.
One word: Mutation.
All it takes is a single cosmic ray impacting on a sperm or an egg, and the wrong chemical gets put in place (this has been verified in the lab.) GTAAT + Mutation = GTAAG
Now, multiply by a trillion, and select for beneficial mutations.
Repeat after me: College is a retirement home for young people.
I'd disagree. Going through those x years of working as a auto mechanic teaches you quite a bit. You may not remember half the bullshit you spout about the $1500 alluvial dampeners in some ditzy lady's car, but it is the other things that you learn that are _way_ more important.
Like how to teach others. You may be really strong in some aspect of auto maintenance, so some of the other mechanics ask you how it works/how to do it. The easiest way is to just give them the answer. The problem with that is that those people keep coming back looking for the easy answer, but if you spend 5-10 minutes initially explaining how/why something works, that mechanic will (hopefully) understand how to do it, and won't come back. When you first start doing things like, you'll probably stumble a bit, and it'll take a while to explain things, but once you get the hang of it, then your teaching becomes much quicker, and much more effective. (a very strong asset for you to have)
Another thing that you will learn is how to ask questions, as above, you may just start out asking for the answer directly, then you start asking why, then (hopefully) after a while, you will be able to succinctly be able to describe a situation, the problem you are having, and what you have tried in a short order of time. (again a very good asset for you)
You learn how to deal with paroled colleagues, superiors, and acquaintances.
A lot of people will think that these are things that you can pick up in high school, or that you already know these things (they are pretty obvious), and yes that is true. But the concentration of these factors, coupled with the pressures of higher education really drive home these qualities, and it should be just second nature to you. So that it is just a reflex, not really something you have to think about.
yea, you could probably learn some or even all of the technical details in 3 months with a stack of mufflers, 2 carburetors (37 cans of oil!), and a couple computers...but you'd miss the whole point of Joe's Auto Garage.
I have tutored any number of impressionable young girls in High School algebra and calculus--and I've come to some conclusions.
1) Choosing the right textbook isn't just important, it's damn important.
2) I could have been replaced by a tape recoder with these phrases in a loop: Well, what do you think the answer is? I know that you don't think that will work--but you can't know until you try. See, you are a very smart girl when it comes to mathematics, I hope you consider it as your college major.
3) A dry textbook is worse than a lively teacher and a lively textbook is better than a dry teacher. It's about motivation, not intelligence. In my experience, confidence in your ability to tackle problems (not necessarily confidence in your solutions, though) is the surest mark of genius. And motivation, unlike intelligence, is under your control.
Here is the advice to give a struggler:
Have you considered a major in psychology?
Now stop trolling about the honor systems CS departments put in place to reduce cheating. It's not like there is anything you actually learn in four years of CS education that you can't learn in 3 months with a pile of books.
Why not just use two barcodes on everything?
There isn't a whole heck of a lot wrong with Yucca Mountain.
And if no-glow nuts are worried about semi-trucks now, imagine what they'll think about space ships hauling the waste right above their heads.
You mean define the limits of the group? That is inherent in the first question. Or the long version of it anyway.
You could find the odds exactly if you knew several figures:
What is the number of bio-whatnot researchers in the group?
What are the odds of one dying in a given time period?
And this is the hardest: How many comparable groups are there in society? For example, politicians dying would be noticed. Baseball players dying would be noticed. And how big are these groups?
If you answer these simple questions, you can answer the main topic.