fighters? the only thing I need to ruin your "battlestar" is a cloud of ball bearings or lead pellets going at the "wrong" velocity (wrong for you).
That seems to be a popular idea in this thread, but shows a lack of adequate consideration. (1) energy weapons are going to be a lot more convenient to have since they don't require bulky ammunition. your idea propose carrying around things that are bulky by design. the more mass you carry, the less maneuverable you are. But that's the less important issue. (2) everyone seems to think that space battles will be fought by blistering fast ships and all you have to do is stick a thumbtack out in front of them to punch a hole straight through their ship. Velocity is going to be expensive then just the same as it is now, and unless someone figures out how to make "inertial dampeners" a la start trek, crew won't survive any maneuvers at those speeds, so speeds will be much slower than you're hoping for. Unless the ships are unmanned, but then still you are dealing with limited fuel on board. Changing vector in space requires loss of mass, newton is still at work in space. Most or all fighters probably WILL be unmanned though, but will be more interested in bang for the buck. Kamakazi drones make the most sense in a scenario like that.
Imagine a drone that functions more like a bomb with a spaceframe built around it. The frame provides propulsion (but no defense) and gets the core to the target, at as high a velocity as possible, to bury the core as deep into the armor as possible. Once penetrated, the core detonates with a dozen or so shaped charges that send moderate mass sabots at very high velocity in a forward distributed direction, to try to punch several holes in the ship from the inside out, rupturing many dozens of sealed compartments. Of course this is unmanned vs manned. Unmanned vs unmanned is where things will get tricky, and I don't see anyone that's put any thought into that here. What do you do against a drone carrier corvette that's lumbering its way toward your station, that carries a hundred little drones as described above?
And no it can't just stomp on the gas and plow into your base. Bases would have substantial energy weapons for defense, and a ship accelerating straight toward you makes a perfect target even at distance. These things will require maneuvering and tactics.
Additionally, you do not actually need to "blow up" a spacecraft, you just need to depressurize it, assuming there are human occupants, or mess with electronics etc.
I'm surprised no one has brought up submarine warfare for comparison here. When in a sub war, one does not try to destroy their opponent. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. And THE enemy is water. Let the enemy in is the name of the game. Same with space. Vacuum is the enemy. Let the enemy into your opponent's ship and then sit back and watch the show. (for as long as it lasts anyway)
Space introduces dynamics as unique as underwater. Craft can be insanely delicate and lack any armor and still be a potent force. Range is dictated by your ability to detect/track your enemy (without becoming a beacon yourself) and to focus laser and other particle weapons at long distance. Stealth is very important.
So I think it's fair to say that any hit with a kinetic or explosive weapon would be fatal. Point-defense against missiles would be mandatory because it would be trivial for even the smallest ship to launch a few dozen little missiles that fan out in a very wide trajectory and track you. Mines would be big - think autonomous boxes that sit quietly playing asteroid until something big that lacks the FOF beacon comes into range.
Due to the extreme decompression risk, crew would probably wear very minimalistic suits that carried very little air and power but could be tethered at their stations, and drop the face shield down in case of breech, to prevent a small breech from voiding the ship. Trying to armor critical areas of the ship would be mostly counter-productive because more mass means less maneuverability. The suits the crew wear may even be similar to flight suits that can help with high-Gs, allowing even greater maneuverability.
I think current sci-fi fighter designs are closer to realistic. Babylon-5's star-furies showed excellent insight, I recommend looking at those for reference. Those also showed how ships need to be able to maneuver in zero-g, featured crew in suits, etc. The only thing not really serious there were the energy "pulse guns". But limited ammunition and fire recoil makes sci-fi space battles a lot less interesting. I think we need to break away from the "pulse gun" concept in sci fi fighters, it's a tired crutch that's unlikely to ever become reality.
A lot of this is considering larger ships. Probably the only "big" things will be moon/asteroid bases and the occasional "space dock" carrier-type large ships, I don't think a "capital class" space battleship will be anything short of a nuke-magnet. (again reference several examples in B5, bigger ships generally lost to smaller ones, for good reason)
The other crutch is unlimited energy, particularly in the fighters. Capital ships could have reactors, but at a great weight and size penalty. I think fighters are going to have to rely on smaller consumable fuel. Fuel logistics will be big, considering the difficulty of getting fuel into orbit or acquiring it in space. Other different ways of storing energy will probably be found, such as being able to produce hydrazine from raw elements found in space, with the synthesis (energy input) from solar power.
I could probably muse about this for several more pages but I'll take a break now I think.
sounds like good advice. I think I'm over the hump this time, I still have a stuffy nose but I think I've beaten it this time around.
. I also stay clear of decongestants, they seem to dry my nose out. This will only keep things there longer since dry mucous is sticky mucous.
In my case my sinuses have very narrow passages in them. From what I can tell, decongestants thin the mucus, and helps it drain out of my sinuses easier. Without them, my entire nasal passage gets clogged up like glue and my final misery usually winds me up breathing through my mouth exclusively. Though I don't know how much of that is clogging with mucus and how much is from my sinuses swelling. I've even been able to get some relief in the past by managing to get straws up into my nostrils so I could breathe through my nose when trying to sleep. The swelling blocks my nose mainly near the nostrils.
I DO run a pair of holmes 3500 humidifiers here to keep the humidity between 30-50%. It fluctuates quite a bit during the winter days because of the cycle of furnace activity between daytime and nighttime. I got the second unit so it'd catch up faster in the morning after the heat kicked on. I do keep my furnace filter changed regularly but don't use any of the expensive filters.
No I don't rinse my nostrils.
My sinus problems aren't allergy-based. They just plain have issues. Not sure exactly what. I've heard horror stories of what my mom went through when she was younger, she had cases of having to pull dried mucus out of her nostrils in strips. Glad mine's not that bad. I think I just have issues with my sinuses being a little more restrictive than usual, plus they are prone to swelling up if irritated, closing my sinus passages, creating a sealed environment for bacteria to grow in.
Your kidding right? you drink Pepsi to help? Who's the quack...
You obviously have little or no experience with sinus infections. I've got lots. The sinuses drain almost nonstop (day and night) down the back of the throat. Before the infection really sets in, the sinus draining produces a yellow (basically snot/phlegm) slick down the back of the throat that is irritating but tolerable.
When the sinus infection gets going, this yellow slick turns green and now the back of your throat has a bacteria-compress on it continuously, and that leads quickly to a throat infection, which causes a hacking cough, the combination of which quickly tears up the throat. All of this means you cough continuously, have a really sore throat, and get zero sleep.
Pepsi isn't too far off from battery acid, but the stomach will tolerate it. It's capable of breaking down a lot of things, including the phlegm streak on the back of the throat produced by the draining sinuses. I knew it might be able to help, so this time around I gave it a go, and it's actually working a lot better than expected. I've been able to take more decongestants because I can keep my throat clear, and I hope that will flush out the brewing sinus infection before it gets out of control. Though I forgot to bring a stock of pepsi to work today, I'll be grabbing a large size mcd's here in a bit to continue to keep the phlegm washed out of the back of my throat.
The pepsi will become a lot more important if the infection gets worse, to keep my throat clear of infected phlegm. But I don't know if my body can eventually evict a full blown sinus infection without antibiotics, I've never really had an opportunity to hold out for more than a few days to find out.
As of 2008, cefalexin was the most popular cephalosporin antibiotic in the United States, with more than 25 million prescriptions of its generic versions alone, for US$255 million in sales (though less popular than two other antibiotics, amoxicillin and azithromycin, each with 50 million prescriptions per year).
At least I'm not alone. Looks like it came out way back in 1967. I've always heard people complaining that if antibiotics were commonly used they'd become less effective over time. But this one's been around for a long time and is in widespread use... so doesn't seem to support their argument much, tho in theory it makes sense.
what kind of sinus infections are we talking about here? If it's the common cold, antibiotics won't do anything for you at all.
It's fairly obvious that these are bacterial infections, considering how effective the antibiotics always are for me.
They've swabbed the back of my throat a few times (pick up a bit of the yellow or green goo to check) but I don't recall them ever getting back to me as to what they found. They may have been checking to make sure it wasn't viral.
So why are the organic farmers not suing more often for pollution by Monsanto's seed?
They have good lawyers that can argue either side of the facts and win. It's hard to get them cornered in a case where they're caught trying to defend their argument and attack it at the same time.
When the farmer's field gets cross pollinated with monsanto GE, Monsanto says the farmer is responsible for the DNA in his field. (due to drift)
Then when the "all natural" farmers get pesticide drift or GE material showing up in their field, the big farms say they can't be responsible for drift from field to field.
See, they want it both ways. The problem is these are usually argued in separate cases, and the law is pushed in one direction or the other by sheer weight of lawyers, whichever is favorable for the big guy in the case, Until this basic question is solidly answered in a court with some weight to it, they'll continue to do this to the little farmers.
I inherited bad sinuses from my mother who occasionally gets wicked sinus infections and has to go on hardcore antibiotics, the kind that WIPE your digestive tract and turn your poo white.
Fortunately for me genetics diluted the problem and I don't get one more than once a year usually. I've tried to tough it out, load up on decongestants and expectorants (due to drainage) etc and all that happens is it gets my throat torn up like hamburger from the infected runoff combined with coughing. Lucky me, I'm going through my yearly round of that right now actually. I started myself on decongestants immediately and have been pounding down pepsi almost nonstop to try to keep my sinuses and throat clear, but it still looks like the throat version of red-eye in there. I might actually beat it without antibiotics for the first time this time since I've jumped on it so aggressively.
In the past it's usually been the same story. Try to use over-the-counter meds for a week, finally it is getting so bad that the yellow mucus overnight has my throat destroyed by morning. (which will improve somewhat during the day, but not enough, it's a losing battle day to night) Enough of those and I can't stop coughing and I sprint into the local "convenient care" before work and a random doc looks at me and prescribes a decongestant and expectorant (that cost 2x the OTC usually) saying he doesn't want to give me antibiotics YET. Thanks.
So I'm back in the office 3-4 day later, almost unable to talk, haven't slept in days, throat killing me, and throat is totally red with green mucus streaking down in the back. "Ooooh! you have a bad sinus infection now! Here's some antibiotics!" Thanks. Now why couldn't we have just done this three days ago instead of putting me through two days of hell?
So the last two times I went in I relayed the above story and they conceded maybe antibiotics before it gets REALLY bad is a good plan for me. And I was sooo thankful, instead of it taking several more days of winding down misery, another two weeks in all, one round of refills to clear up, it was much better the very next day and cleared up in 5 days, both times.
Whoever says antibiotics don't help sinus infections is a quack. I seriously wonder what would happen to people like me if there were no antibiotics, could it get bad enough to hospitalize or kill me?
Yes you can, in a limited way. You can patent genetic modifications. And that's what this is all about.
The problem here is that there's no foolproof way to prevent this variation of copyright infringement. (Monsanto is like the RIAA of the farm) And so they've bought the laws stacked heavily in their favor to make sure they can legally go after everyone they're entitled to, at a cost of being able to go after a lot of innocents as well. (one of my pet peeves, overly broad laws)
In this case the big issue is that if a farmer has a field near a Monsanto field, the wind WILL (not slim chance, not might, not maybe, WILL) cross-pollinate with some of the corn in his field. Then the goons can come in and find a kernel or two that contain DNA from their patented field, and by the law that makes you breaking the law and owing damagesa. So now the little farmer gets extorted out of his land. And that's just how the laws have been bought onto the books. It's not right, but that's the law now.
This isn't like music downloading where 95% is infringing and they're trying to hide under the "5% of it is lawful so you have to allow it" umbrella. There is a significant percentage of "unavoidable unintentional infringing" going on and companies like Monsanto abuse the law to their advantage as a result.
no, your employer is paying you to work for them. You are their bitch, you should know this as you agreed to it when you signed the contract that exchanged your time for their money. If you had any sense you'd have read it and had the bit that says "all work done during this employment" changed to "all work done during contracted hours" (or similar)
In most cases people are hired to perform specific tasks. They are not expected to perform tasks far outside the bounds of those things. If you're hired to be a programmer for an auto company, they expect you to write code for their cars or their business. If you come up with a good idea on how to manage antilock brakes, whether or not while on the clock, that idea is theirs. If you come up with an optimization on a mailserver while you're off the clock while you're at home, they might have claim to that, if part of your job involves maintenance of the servers while at work. If you think of a really good new recipe for your favorite lasagna one weekend, come on now... do you really expect that to be company property? (but see, if you blew an hour of their time during your day job thinking about it, instead of while off the clock, you've cheated them out of some of the time they pay you for)
You can't just simply say "anything you think of, on or off the clock, is mine". It will need to have some relevance to the job you were hired to do to hold water.
When you are hired by a company, they do not own your life. They own your services and the fruits of your services created during a fixed period of time during the week. They may also have claim to IP created off the clock that is directly related to the work you perform while on the clock, because you are benefitting from the time they paid you for while at work, where they were paying you to think about those things.
Simply because you "might have been thinking about that while you were at work yesterday" doesn't mean they own the idea. If you're being productive and focused at work you won't likely have much time to think about anything off task anyway. If you do waste company time thinking about unrelated things you are working on independently at home, (like spending an hour on the web researching different new spice ideas for your lasagna you're going to be making for dinner on Sunday) then you either have to look at it as the employer having a stake in your "project" at home, OR that you are cheating the company by misuse of on-the-clock time. Since the former is such a grey area and difficult to quantify, the latter is the one that should be enforced. In other words, if you're frequently daydreaming at work on design ideas for your new automatic porch painter while at work, they ought to replace you with someone with more focus that will have better productivity, instead of trying to claim some stake in your painting business you do on the weekend.
Richardson used his inside knowledge of IRS operations to commit his crime,
So I wonder what aspect of "insider knowledge" he used? Logins and passwords? back doors? social engineering? test accounts? phone numbers to helpful clerks that don't think about what they're being asked to do? secret URLs?
Is there a back door that anyone with similar "insider knowledge" can use, that's not a hole that's closable with say a simple password change? (has the hole been closed?)
If you have a low enough SNR, detecting the existence of the signal at all become impossible
This usually requires the percentage of secret data to be very small compared to the amount of "plausibly harmless" data it's steno'd into.
So whether or not that is usable depends on the amount of data you want to hide, and what you intend to hide it in. If you want to send a paragraph of text you can probably squeeze that nicely into a tiff from your camera with minimal risk. But if you want to send someone a DVD length video, you'll have a hard time finding an elephant to hide that in.
In theory you're right, but practical application can be a problem.
And even in the above paragraph in a tiff example, if someone is LOOKING for data to be hidden in the image, it vastly improves their odds of finding it. Most stenography is traditionally very hard to recognize but fairly easy to forcefully extract. Once someone knows there's a high probability of data in that tiff, they will just whip out an entropy checker like the article we saw here recently for detecting photoshopping, and that is highly likely to confirm stenography is at work. And with most of these countries, they don't need to read what you put in the tiff, simply getting caught trying to hide something will get you locked up. (and $5 wrenched if they can't get the data out themselves)
Tor Tests Undetectably Encrypted Connections In Iran
"Undetectably encrypted". No. There really is no such thing. "Obfuscated", "disguised", ok I'll take those, but not "undetectably". Makes it sound like it's flat out impossible to figure out the traffic contains encrypted data.
I'm sure cisco and motorola etc will send their people over there this weekend to make upgrades to the censorware they sold them last year. They provide such good customer service to our adversaries when there's a buck to be made. (isn't there a law against this? they push so hard politically in one direction all the while the american businesses drive a dagger in the back of their goals)
this is just a case of them trying to have their cake and eat it too, when they'd really much rather HAVE their cake than EAT it, if given the choice. So the judge had to make a call, and it was called EAT it. So now they find themselves in pretty much the worst possible scenario. By their own involvements they've gotten MP3's judged as material objects.
And now have an almost impossible to police or defend position of having to identify and prove that you don't still have a copy after selling it. Serves them right for trying to double-dip. They would have been much better off to have claimed it was exclusively not a physical object - at least then they'd have more applicable laws to erm... abuse.
We payed those senators and lobbyists sooo much money and they didn't vote how we told them to! It's not fair! That's not how congress is supposed to work!
If the woman agreed that the disk contained incriminating information then she can't be asked for the password. But right now she's indicating it doesn't.
"... on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate me." MAY is not WILL. You are not required to admit guilt to 'plead the 5th'.
I don't agree that a key or a combination should be compellable. The safe or safety deposit box or lock yes, not the key. They produced the evidence, just not in the format they wanted. (decrypted)
If you want to go that route, you have to decide how handing over encrypted data should be classified.
First thing I would look at is, was the data encrypted in response to a belief that it would be incriminating, or was it encrypted for privacy? If the former, I could see classifying it as hiding evidence or possibly as destruction of evidence. But not the latter. I would require proof that it was encrypted specifically to interfere with court subpoena because it was believed to be incriminating. If you can't prove that, it's like other court requirements of proof, charges of "going armed with intent" requires proving intent.
Secondly though, there is opportunity for "plausible deniability" in forgetting a password. I see several posters here describing having forgotten a password and having permanently lost access to their data. *I* have personally had that problem, I somehow managed to commit a typeo when changing a password, and the same typeo when entering the confirmation. (that took me DAYS to regain access to) So I will vouch for the plausibility of this defense. A judge should not have the right to lock me up indefinitely because I forgot my password. And right now it appears they can. How on earth is that due process?? Where is the appeal? Where is the check and balance?
Here's a strawman for someone to beat on: How about if a judge really wants to lock up someone that he thoroughly believes is guilty as charged, and simply demands he produce some kind of evidence that will convict him? He can order that, right? This whole issue reminds me of a Writ of Assistance ; basically a legal blank-check - "Do what I say, whatever I say, or I will lock you up."
and the court is satisfied that she has not forgotten the password
"court" refers in this case to just the judge? So the person making the order is also the one that decides on compliance? That doesn't sound like prudent separation of powers.
Also I was just thinking doesn't this also amount to a "guilty until proven innocent" situation where forgetting passwords is at issue? And if so, is it even possible to prove your innocence? (this is often very difficult, which is why "innocent until proven guilty" is commonly adopted)
Although the Constitution of the United States does not cite it explicitly, presumption of innocence is widely held to follow from the 5th, 6th, and 14th amendments. See also Coffin v. United States and In re Winship.
It really seems like this would be an easy thing to challenge in a higher court. I was just reviewing the last SCOTUS ruling on requiring providing of passwords, and it was upheld 5-4. That's not exactly a solid majority.
I don't understand why refusal to disclose information is a justification for contempt of court. It appears it would violate the 4th amendment? A judge shouldn't have completely unrestricted ability to make demands or judge a person in contempt. Not that it's a practical example, but could a judge demand that a person commit a crime such as assault? Would his refusal be a legal justification for finding him in contempt? If that's possible, that would appear to legally demonstrate the contempt system violates one's rights in court?
"Switch DNS or whatever directs traffic to point at new site. or whatever? Go learn something, then try to participate in the discussion.
I'm no DNS savant but I do understand how to temporarily change my records' TTL values to something like say, 5 minutes. Is that what you were referring to?
the olympics committee that go postal over anyone trying to edge in on their merchandising turf. But I suppose these are two of the biggest commercial events in the world. What are a few of the other lesser knowns that go to these lengths to protect their merchandising of the event? (I can kinda understand with the NFL, it's not about football as much is is about making money over football, but the olympics I feel should have a bit less greed in their heads)
Usually they do this by adding a small module for docking. IIRC the space shuttle specifically had to carry along a docking module in the front of the cargo bay if they wanted to dock the shuttle. In that case the module was on the craft not the station. I suppose they could just make a little extension module for it.
But remember the current setup is an international standard that everyone is designing around. So your idea may just plain be suggested too late. Imagine the amount of testing that goes into such a critical system as a docking apparatus? It's probably one of the most difficult and critical things up there. Not only does a failure risk BOTH vessels and all the crew aboard both, but it has to be able to handle mechanical stress between two very large masses. So I bet they're not too enthusiastic about redesigning it once they've got something they're satisfied with.
Slashdot Mirror
That seems to be a popular idea in this thread, but shows a lack of adequate consideration. (1) energy weapons are going to be a lot more convenient to have since they don't require bulky ammunition. your idea propose carrying around things that are bulky by design. the more mass you carry, the less maneuverable you are. But that's the less important issue. (2) everyone seems to think that space battles will be fought by blistering fast ships and all you have to do is stick a thumbtack out in front of them to punch a hole straight through their ship. Velocity is going to be expensive then just the same as it is now, and unless someone figures out how to make "inertial dampeners" a la start trek, crew won't survive any maneuvers at those speeds, so speeds will be much slower than you're hoping for. Unless the ships are unmanned, but then still you are dealing with limited fuel on board. Changing vector in space requires loss of mass, newton is still at work in space. Most or all fighters probably WILL be unmanned though, but will be more interested in bang for the buck. Kamakazi drones make the most sense in a scenario like that.
Imagine a drone that functions more like a bomb with a spaceframe built around it. The frame provides propulsion (but no defense) and gets the core to the target, at as high a velocity as possible, to bury the core as deep into the armor as possible. Once penetrated, the core detonates with a dozen or so shaped charges that send moderate mass sabots at very high velocity in a forward distributed direction, to try to punch several holes in the ship from the inside out, rupturing many dozens of sealed compartments. Of course this is unmanned vs manned. Unmanned vs unmanned is where things will get tricky, and I don't see anyone that's put any thought into that here. What do you do against a drone carrier corvette that's lumbering its way toward your station, that carries a hundred little drones as described above?
And no it can't just stomp on the gas and plow into your base. Bases would have substantial energy weapons for defense, and a ship accelerating straight toward you makes a perfect target even at distance. These things will require maneuvering and tactics.
I'm surprised no one has brought up submarine warfare for comparison here. When in a sub war, one does not try to destroy their opponent. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. And THE enemy is water. Let the enemy in is the name of the game. Same with space. Vacuum is the enemy. Let the enemy into your opponent's ship and then sit back and watch the show. (for as long as it lasts anyway)
Space introduces dynamics as unique as underwater. Craft can be insanely delicate and lack any armor and still be a potent force. Range is dictated by your ability to detect/track your enemy (without becoming a beacon yourself) and to focus laser and other particle weapons at long distance. Stealth is very important.
So I think it's fair to say that any hit with a kinetic or explosive weapon would be fatal. Point-defense against missiles would be mandatory because it would be trivial for even the smallest ship to launch a few dozen little missiles that fan out in a very wide trajectory and track you. Mines would be big - think autonomous boxes that sit quietly playing asteroid until something big that lacks the FOF beacon comes into range.
Due to the extreme decompression risk, crew would probably wear very minimalistic suits that carried very little air and power but could be tethered at their stations, and drop the face shield down in case of breech, to prevent a small breech from voiding the ship. Trying to armor critical areas of the ship would be mostly counter-productive because more mass means less maneuverability. The suits the crew wear may even be similar to flight suits that can help with high-Gs, allowing even greater maneuverability.
I think current sci-fi fighter designs are closer to realistic. Babylon-5's star-furies showed excellent insight, I recommend looking at those for reference. Those also showed how ships need to be able to maneuver in zero-g, featured crew in suits, etc. The only thing not really serious there were the energy "pulse guns". But limited ammunition and fire recoil makes sci-fi space battles a lot less interesting. I think we need to break away from the "pulse gun" concept in sci fi fighters, it's a tired crutch that's unlikely to ever become reality.
A lot of this is considering larger ships. Probably the only "big" things will be moon/asteroid bases and the occasional "space dock" carrier-type large ships, I don't think a "capital class" space battleship will be anything short of a nuke-magnet. (again reference several examples in B5, bigger ships generally lost to smaller ones, for good reason)
The other crutch is unlimited energy, particularly in the fighters. Capital ships could have reactors, but at a great weight and size penalty. I think fighters are going to have to rely on smaller consumable fuel. Fuel logistics will be big, considering the difficulty of getting fuel into orbit or acquiring it in space. Other different ways of storing energy will probably be found, such as being able to produce hydrazine from raw elements found in space, with the synthesis (energy input) from solar power.
I could probably muse about this for several more pages but I'll take a break now I think.
This is somewhat appropriate here I think. Frequentlyt, Dilbert is on-target when management is not.
Thanks for the idea, I'll give that a try next time things get that far. lets hope no time soon...
sounds like good advice. I think I'm over the hump this time, I still have a stuffy nose but I think I've beaten it this time around.
In my case my sinuses have very narrow passages in them. From what I can tell, decongestants thin the mucus, and helps it drain out of my sinuses easier. Without them, my entire nasal passage gets clogged up like glue and my final misery usually winds me up breathing through my mouth exclusively. Though I don't know how much of that is clogging with mucus and how much is from my sinuses swelling. I've even been able to get some relief in the past by managing to get straws up into my nostrils so I could breathe through my nose when trying to sleep. The swelling blocks my nose mainly near the nostrils.
I DO run a pair of holmes 3500 humidifiers here to keep the humidity between 30-50%. It fluctuates quite a bit during the winter days because of the cycle of furnace activity between daytime and nighttime. I got the second unit so it'd catch up faster in the morning after the heat kicked on. I do keep my furnace filter changed regularly but don't use any of the expensive filters.
No I don't rinse my nostrils.
My sinus problems aren't allergy-based. They just plain have issues. Not sure exactly what. I've heard horror stories of what my mom went through when she was younger, she had cases of having to pull dried mucus out of her nostrils in strips. Glad mine's not that bad. I think I just have issues with my sinuses being a little more restrictive than usual, plus they are prone to swelling up if irritated, closing my sinus passages, creating a sealed environment for bacteria to grow in.
You obviously have little or no experience with sinus infections. I've got lots. The sinuses drain almost nonstop (day and night) down the back of the throat. Before the infection really sets in, the sinus draining produces a yellow (basically snot/phlegm) slick down the back of the throat that is irritating but tolerable.
When the sinus infection gets going, this yellow slick turns green and now the back of your throat has a bacteria-compress on it continuously, and that leads quickly to a throat infection, which causes a hacking cough, the combination of which quickly tears up the throat. All of this means you cough continuously, have a really sore throat, and get zero sleep.
Pepsi isn't too far off from battery acid, but the stomach will tolerate it. It's capable of breaking down a lot of things, including the phlegm streak on the back of the throat produced by the draining sinuses. I knew it might be able to help, so this time around I gave it a go, and it's actually working a lot better than expected. I've been able to take more decongestants because I can keep my throat clear, and I hope that will flush out the brewing sinus infection before it gets out of control. Though I forgot to bring a stock of pepsi to work today, I'll be grabbing a large size mcd's here in a bit to continue to keep the phlegm washed out of the back of my throat.
The pepsi will become a lot more important if the infection gets worse, to keep my throat clear of infected phlegm. But I don't know if my body can eventually evict a full blown sinus infection without antibiotics, I've never really had an opportunity to hold out for more than a few days to find out.
The one they usually give me is Cephalexin
At least I'm not alone. Looks like it came out way back in 1967. I've always heard people complaining that if antibiotics were commonly used they'd become less effective over time. But this one's been around for a long time and is in widespread use... so doesn't seem to support their argument much, tho in theory it makes sense.
It's fairly obvious that these are bacterial infections, considering how effective the antibiotics always are for me.
They've swabbed the back of my throat a few times (pick up a bit of the yellow or green goo to check) but I don't recall them ever getting back to me as to what they found. They may have been checking to make sure it wasn't viral.
They have good lawyers that can argue either side of the facts and win. It's hard to get them cornered in a case where they're caught trying to defend their argument and attack it at the same time.
When the farmer's field gets cross pollinated with monsanto GE, Monsanto says the farmer is responsible for the DNA in his field. (due to drift)
Then when the "all natural" farmers get pesticide drift or GE material showing up in their field, the big farms say they can't be responsible for drift from field to field.
See, they want it both ways. The problem is these are usually argued in separate cases, and the law is pushed in one direction or the other by sheer weight of lawyers, whichever is favorable for the big guy in the case, Until this basic question is solidly answered in a court with some weight to it, they'll continue to do this to the little farmers.
I inherited bad sinuses from my mother who occasionally gets wicked sinus infections and has to go on hardcore antibiotics, the kind that WIPE your digestive tract and turn your poo white.
Fortunately for me genetics diluted the problem and I don't get one more than once a year usually. I've tried to tough it out, load up on decongestants and expectorants (due to drainage) etc and all that happens is it gets my throat torn up like hamburger from the infected runoff combined with coughing. Lucky me, I'm going through my yearly round of that right now actually. I started myself on decongestants immediately and have been pounding down pepsi almost nonstop to try to keep my sinuses and throat clear, but it still looks like the throat version of red-eye in there. I might actually beat it without antibiotics for the first time this time since I've jumped on it so aggressively.
In the past it's usually been the same story. Try to use over-the-counter meds for a week, finally it is getting so bad that the yellow mucus overnight has my throat destroyed by morning. (which will improve somewhat during the day, but not enough, it's a losing battle day to night) Enough of those and I can't stop coughing and I sprint into the local "convenient care" before work and a random doc looks at me and prescribes a decongestant and expectorant (that cost 2x the OTC usually) saying he doesn't want to give me antibiotics YET. Thanks.
So I'm back in the office 3-4 day later, almost unable to talk, haven't slept in days, throat killing me, and throat is totally red with green mucus streaking down in the back. "Ooooh! you have a bad sinus infection now! Here's some antibiotics!" Thanks. Now why couldn't we have just done this three days ago instead of putting me through two days of hell?
So the last two times I went in I relayed the above story and they conceded maybe antibiotics before it gets REALLY bad is a good plan for me. And I was sooo thankful, instead of it taking several more days of winding down misery, another two weeks in all, one round of refills to clear up, it was much better the very next day and cleared up in 5 days, both times.
Whoever says antibiotics don't help sinus infections is a quack. I seriously wonder what would happen to people like me if there were no antibiotics, could it get bad enough to hospitalize or kill me?
Yes you can, in a limited way. You can patent genetic modifications. And that's what this is all about.
The problem here is that there's no foolproof way to prevent this variation of copyright infringement. (Monsanto is like the RIAA of the farm) And so they've bought the laws stacked heavily in their favor to make sure they can legally go after everyone they're entitled to, at a cost of being able to go after a lot of innocents as well. (one of my pet peeves, overly broad laws)
In this case the big issue is that if a farmer has a field near a Monsanto field, the wind WILL (not slim chance, not might, not maybe, WILL) cross-pollinate with some of the corn in his field. Then the goons can come in and find a kernel or two that contain DNA from their patented field, and by the law that makes you breaking the law and owing damagesa. So now the little farmer gets extorted out of his land. And that's just how the laws have been bought onto the books. It's not right, but that's the law now.
This isn't like music downloading where 95% is infringing and they're trying to hide under the "5% of it is lawful so you have to allow it" umbrella. There is a significant percentage of "unavoidable unintentional infringing" going on and companies like Monsanto abuse the law to their advantage as a result.
In most cases people are hired to perform specific tasks. They are not expected to perform tasks far outside the bounds of those things. If you're hired to be a programmer for an auto company, they expect you to write code for their cars or their business. If you come up with a good idea on how to manage antilock brakes, whether or not while on the clock, that idea is theirs. If you come up with an optimization on a mailserver while you're off the clock while you're at home, they might have claim to that, if part of your job involves maintenance of the servers while at work. If you think of a really good new recipe for your favorite lasagna one weekend, come on now... do you really expect that to be company property? (but see, if you blew an hour of their time during your day job thinking about it, instead of while off the clock, you've cheated them out of some of the time they pay you for)
You can't just simply say "anything you think of, on or off the clock, is mine". It will need to have some relevance to the job you were hired to do to hold water.
When you are hired by a company, they do not own your life. They own your services and the fruits of your services created during a fixed period of time during the week. They may also have claim to IP created off the clock that is directly related to the work you perform while on the clock, because you are benefitting from the time they paid you for while at work, where they were paying you to think about those things.
Simply because you "might have been thinking about that while you were at work yesterday" doesn't mean they own the idea. If you're being productive and focused at work you won't likely have much time to think about anything off task anyway. If you do waste company time thinking about unrelated things you are working on independently at home, (like spending an hour on the web researching different new spice ideas for your lasagna you're going to be making for dinner on Sunday) then you either have to look at it as the employer having a stake in your "project" at home, OR that you are cheating the company by misuse of on-the-clock time. Since the former is such a grey area and difficult to quantify, the latter is the one that should be enforced. In other words, if you're frequently daydreaming at work on design ideas for your new automatic porch painter while at work, they ought to replace you with someone with more focus that will have better productivity, instead of trying to claim some stake in your painting business you do on the weekend.
So I wonder what aspect of "insider knowledge" he used? Logins and passwords? back doors? social engineering? test accounts? phone numbers to helpful clerks that don't think about what they're being asked to do? secret URLs?
Is there a back door that anyone with similar "insider knowledge" can use, that's not a hole that's closable with say a simple password change? (has the hole been closed?)
This usually requires the percentage of secret data to be very small compared to the amount of "plausibly harmless" data it's steno'd into.
So whether or not that is usable depends on the amount of data you want to hide, and what you intend to hide it in. If you want to send a paragraph of text you can probably squeeze that nicely into a tiff from your camera with minimal risk. But if you want to send someone a DVD length video, you'll have a hard time finding an elephant to hide that in.
In theory you're right, but practical application can be a problem.
And even in the above paragraph in a tiff example, if someone is LOOKING for data to be hidden in the image, it vastly improves their odds of finding it. Most stenography is traditionally very hard to recognize but fairly easy to forcefully extract. Once someone knows there's a high probability of data in that tiff, they will just whip out an entropy checker like the article we saw here recently for detecting photoshopping, and that is highly likely to confirm stenography is at work. And with most of these countries, they don't need to read what you put in the tiff, simply getting caught trying to hide something will get you locked up. (and $5 wrenched if they can't get the data out themselves)
"Undetectably encrypted". No. There really is no such thing. "Obfuscated", "disguised", ok I'll take those, but not "undetectably". Makes it sound like it's flat out impossible to figure out the traffic contains encrypted data.
I'm sure cisco and motorola etc will send their people over there this weekend to make upgrades to the censorware they sold them last year. They provide such good customer service to our adversaries when there's a buck to be made. (isn't there a law against this? they push so hard politically in one direction all the while the american businesses drive a dagger in the back of their goals)
this is just a case of them trying to have their cake and eat it too, when they'd really much rather HAVE their cake than EAT it, if given the choice. So the judge had to make a call, and it was called EAT it. So now they find themselves in pretty much the worst possible scenario. By their own involvements they've gotten MP3's judged as material objects.
And now have an almost impossible to police or defend position of having to identify and prove that you don't still have a copy after selling it. Serves them right for trying to double-dip. They would have been much better off to have claimed it was exclusively not a physical object - at least then they'd have more applicable laws to erm... abuse.
We payed those senators and lobbyists sooo much money and they didn't vote how we told them to! It's not fair! That's not how congress is supposed to work!
"... on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate me." MAY is not WILL. You are not required to admit guilt to 'plead the 5th'.
I don't agree that a key or a combination should be compellable. The safe or safety deposit box or lock yes, not the key. They produced the evidence, just not in the format they wanted. (decrypted)
If you want to go that route, you have to decide how handing over encrypted data should be classified.
First thing I would look at is, was the data encrypted in response to a belief that it would be incriminating, or was it encrypted for privacy? If the former, I could see classifying it as hiding evidence or possibly as destruction of evidence. But not the latter. I would require proof that it was encrypted specifically to interfere with court subpoena because it was believed to be incriminating. If you can't prove that, it's like other court requirements of proof, charges of "going armed with intent" requires proving intent.
Secondly though, there is opportunity for "plausible deniability" in forgetting a password. I see several posters here describing having forgotten a password and having permanently lost access to their data. *I* have personally had that problem, I somehow managed to commit a typeo when changing a password, and the same typeo when entering the confirmation. (that took me DAYS to regain access to) So I will vouch for the plausibility of this defense. A judge should not have the right to lock me up indefinitely because I forgot my password. And right now it appears they can. How on earth is that due process?? Where is the appeal? Where is the check and balance?
Here's a strawman for someone to beat on: How about if a judge really wants to lock up someone that he thoroughly believes is guilty as charged, and simply demands he produce some kind of evidence that will convict him? He can order that, right? This whole issue reminds me of a Writ of Assistance ; basically a legal blank-check - "Do what I say, whatever I say, or I will lock you up."
"court" refers in this case to just the judge? So the person making the order is also the one that decides on compliance? That doesn't sound like prudent separation of powers.
Also I was just thinking doesn't this also amount to a "guilty until proven innocent" situation where forgetting passwords is at issue? And if so, is it even possible to prove your innocence? (this is often very difficult, which is why "innocent until proven guilty" is commonly adopted)
It really seems like this would be an easy thing to challenge in a higher court. I was just reviewing the last SCOTUS ruling on requiring providing of passwords, and it was upheld 5-4. That's not exactly a solid majority.
I don't understand why refusal to disclose information is a justification for contempt of court. It appears it would violate the 4th amendment? A judge shouldn't have completely unrestricted ability to make demands or judge a person in contempt. Not that it's a practical example, but could a judge demand that a person commit a crime such as assault? Would his refusal be a legal justification for finding him in contempt? If that's possible, that would appear to legally demonstrate the contempt system violates one's rights in court?
I'm no DNS savant but I do understand how to temporarily change my records' TTL values to something like say, 5 minutes. Is that what you were referring to?
the olympics committee that go postal over anyone trying to edge in on their merchandising turf. But I suppose these are two of the biggest commercial events in the world. What are a few of the other lesser knowns that go to these lengths to protect their merchandising of the event? (I can kinda understand with the NFL, it's not about football as much is is about making money over football, but the olympics I feel should have a bit less greed in their heads)
Usually they do this by adding a small module for docking. IIRC the space shuttle specifically had to carry along a docking module in the front of the cargo bay if they wanted to dock the shuttle. In that case the module was on the craft not the station. I suppose they could just make a little extension module for it.
But remember the current setup is an international standard that everyone is designing around. So your idea may just plain be suggested too late. Imagine the amount of testing that goes into such a critical system as a docking apparatus? It's probably one of the most difficult and critical things up there. Not only does a failure risk BOTH vessels and all the crew aboard both, but it has to be able to handle mechanical stress between two very large masses. So I bet they're not too enthusiastic about redesigning it once they've got something they're satisfied with.