Even then, they should not have taken it. Either they ask him to hand in the laptop and he complies, or they report the issue to the police. Who do they think they are, vigilantes?
Teachers have to have the right to confiscate property [from pupils].
I'd like you to substantiate that. Teachers are no police officers and, especially if the institution is private, they are no legal representatives of authority. Even if they were, they would need the a judge's warrant, which I highly doubt the teacher in question sought. What that teacher allegedly did is seizure of property by intimidation, otherwise known as robbery, and the student would do well to report her to the police. Unless the parents signed a sort of transfer of their parenting rights to school personnel (which may be the case), teachers do not have any right to confiscate anything.
I'm not a warmonger or anything like that, but if the system has a 1 in 10 chance of stopping a nuclear missile or other rogue missile launched at a U.S. city (say mine), i'd rather have that chance than zero chance if we don't have the system.
There are other implications to this game. Missile defense was forbidden by treaties between the US and the USSR (as that other guy said, however, treaties are just paper) because it would hollow out mutual assured destruction. If one of the two superpowers believed they had sufficient missile protection, there would have a been much lower threshold to start a nuclear war.
The only reason this is being developed by the US military is to enable nuclear attacks against nuclear-capable enemies. Forget about the crap about rogue states and terrorists, they could be pointing at pedophiles and it would be just as credible. Rogue states want nukes as deterrent material, so that the US know that attacking them may result in escalation; they are surely not as stupid as to start a nuclear war they are guaranteed to lose spectacularly.
The moment this system works will be the first time the US will be able to (credibly) point around the nuclear gun since Nagasaki, and you can be sure that it will freak people out.
The parliament also needs reform, greater visibilty and greater accountability.
A few years back we seemed to be headed towards a European constitution. The text was horribly formatted, there was no declaration of values as in most constitutions, it was so long no one could reasonably expected to read all that, and there was endless bitching from the Catholic church and their lackeys about inserting a paragraph about the continent's Christian roots, conveniently forgetting that modern democracy in Europe is mostly due to anti-clericals and that the Church has opposed pretty much any progress in civil rights (yesterday's news: they support killing gays in Iran and other religious cesspits).
However, that constitution was still better than nothing. Among other things, it finally gave power to the EU parliament, but who shot down the constitution? The French, in a national referendum. So, if anything, they are getting what they asked for—continued unaccountability of Brussels bureaucrats.
I have not yet seen someone mentioning it, so I might just report the concept of well-to-wheel efficiency, i.e. the efficiency from extraction until consumption in a vehicle. IIRC That's about 10% for the oil-to-gasoline cycle. That makes hydrogen a 140% improvement over current situation, and that's according to a critic.
Burning garbage creates highly toxic materials, like dioxin.
You are right, and I think that's one of the reasons they are proposing plasma (look it up...). In that state of matter, all molecules break up, including dioxin and other poisonous compounds. However, what happens when you cool down the exhaust gases will depend a lot on the construction, so you might still get dioxin (or something worse than that); I suppose this is fairly implementation-dependent. Also, I am not so sure about what happens to particulate: does the cooling process create more of it, or does the plasma state break it down?
Has anyone done the math and compared the economic value of 60MW of electricity versus the value of the equivalent trash? I suppose you should account for sorting and recycling costs on one side, and for operating costs, plant capital costs and maintenance on both. Unfortunately I have no data on this so I cannot really argue for one alternative or the other.
[...] prosecutors in Italy decide to go after Google?
Prosecutors do not decide what to prosecute in Italy. Felonies, when reported, must always be investigated. In this case, it was the ministry of Interior that sent in a complaint, and prosecutors are only doing their job. Should they decide to start a trial instead of archiving the case, then there will be a reason to insult them.
That was a comment that reeks Mafia all the way. Sure, some prosecutors are silly like there are silly people everywhere, but this kind of generalisation is typical of corrupt politicians who accuse prosecutors going after them of being politically motivated, as appearing in the press were the main aspiration of prosecutors (in case you did not know: we do not elect prosecutors nor judges here, so being known among the populace is no career advantage). There is much more money and career to be made by keeping quiet and pandering to illegal interests, as Corrado Carnevale exemplifies.
As for the specific case, I'd like to point out that in the Italian system felonies, once reported, must always be investigated and prosecuted, no matter the opinion of the prosecutor; it is a way of reducing arbitrary decisions and IMHO it is overall a Good Thing. As the article says, the decision to hold trial has not been made yet, and the chance that the prosecutor will ask for an archiving is not as small as you Americans may think; since all reported felonies must be investigated, dropping one is not a mark of incompetence on someone's career.
If I remember correctly, in this specific instance it was former justice minister Clemente Mastella, leader of a corruption-ridden micro-party and currently in political disgrace (the two things are unfortunately unrelated...) that was most vocal in calling for a ban on Youtube and Google video when the video surfaced, of course never suggesting that the people who uploaded the video and performed the assault should be investigated themselves.
In fact, I have no idea about what happened to the perpetrators. Surely I did not read nor hear anything on Italian media. It seems that all the fuss was about the thing being recorded and broadcast, instead of the crime itself.
Deploy the Cheapest, Cleanest, Fastest Energy Source - Energy Efficiency.
I gather rhetoric rather than science is his key policy.
And I gather that you never attended a course in economics of energy sources, because that statement is right on target. My professor in the subject insisted a lot on that point: conservation is the best energy source you can possibly get.
In fact, a lot of the political discourse in the West about energy policy is usually reduced to "how do we get more energy", instead of "how do we reduce our consumption", I suppose because we don't want to upset the people who profit from that consumption. It's great that at last someone starts to change at least the words used in the debate.
Please report immediately to decontamination area 4. Remember to burn all your clothes. Exposed items you wish to decontaminate must be collected in a sealed, transparent plastic bag and handed in to the paramedical personnel at your decontamination area.
But basically, a voter in the US is never required to declare their political affiliation when they register to vote.
Got as much. Yet, just because you can register, this can be turned into a requirement (see the old argument about the ID card being made de facto obligatory if required in enough places). Suppose your state administration is in the hands of the Coprolitan party, and you are trying to be on amicable terms with them (you need some sort of license for your business, or you work for the administration, or you want to be hired, whatever). Everybody knows that Coprolitan politicians are sleazy corrupt bastards, and will consider your allegiance when making decisions about you.
Are you going to register independent, or even register as a voter of the opposing Four-Unemployed-Losers-For-Freedom party, and jeopardise your economy and your family's? You shouldn't even come close to this kind of decision, there is a reason why ballots are anonymous.
Furthermore, aren't employment laws very "flexible" in America? What if some PHB, in layoff season, decides to fire people of the opposite political party?
Which is another weird thing. Why do states and public institutions meddle in the primary process of a party?
I voted in primary elections held my country (which is one of the great things we got from America, granted), and no one ever came close to the idea of involving any public office in the process. To vote, one had to give a minimal contribution of 1 euro and give proof of identity. Those were the first nation-wide primaries ever in my country, and 4,311,149 voted (including people abroad, like me: I voted in Stockholm), whereas just one million was considered a dream on the day before. All organised by the coalition that later won the elections, and worked just fine (except for a politician murdered on the way home from the vote).
Germans accept [...] and even registration of their religious affiliation.
Man, is this coming from America, the one country in the West where you the government is allowed to record your political affiliation when you register to vote?
Government registration of residence and workplace can be abused, but generally serves a number of legitimate purposes, as do ID cards (which are not a tool of the Big Brother, as some privacy Quixotes would have it). What is exactly the reason for the government knowing what you vote for?
Mmh, I see, so your strategy is getting them drunk so they will not fight back? Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Citizens in less populated state have more of a vote than citizens in more populated states.
Worse than that, only battleground-state citizen count at all. When is the last time California, New York, Utah or Texas got some attention from a presidential candidate? Instead, Ohio, Florida, Missouri and a few others steal all the show. I was reading on Obama's website for the state of Alaska, and I found out that their activism is *gasp* calling people in Colorado and Nevada!
The absurd thing is, I heard arguments going like "with the electoral college the candidates have to consider the countryside, not just the large cities"! But obviously, when campaigning in Florida and Ohio, candidates do concentrate on cities—that's where most people are. Plus, sparsely populated states like Idaho, Wyoming and Kansas will never get a visit because they are so skewed for one side.
Personally I find the electoral vote insulting: it makes the votes of the majority of the population of the US almost useless, since they already know who is going to win their state: this makes their vote useless not just in a predicted landslide (as the current election), but also in elections where it comes down to a few votes, like 2000 and 2004. And people wonder why so few Americans bother to vote at all?
Since for some reason the cliche' in American media is that the USA are the oldest functioning democracy on the world, you may actually learn something today: Finland is. Finland introduced universal suffrage and the right to run for office for women in 1906. The USA as a whole can be counted as a democracy since 1964, when the blacks in the South states were finally allowed to vote and run for office and poll taxes were abolished (though most states had universal suffrage and right to run, but there is no such thing as a democracy for the few).
Sad to see that a nation with such a history is going down the drain of electronic voting...
If 85% of white people voted for McCain, it would be considered racist.
Guess what, someone in another thread is complaining about the overuse of "correlation is not causation", and here you go with a fine example of correlation having nothing to do with causation. The black vote has always been for the democrats in the last decades, and this time the democrat candidate happens to be black (halfway at least).
Since 90% of the blacks are voting for the presidential ticket with no women, are you inferring that blacks don't like boobs?
Er, what? Denmark was the quietest piece of Axis-occupied territory in Europe. I cannot recall a country occupied by Nazi Germany that offered so little resistance. I wonder where you got that factoid.
My father almost died in a traffic accident in 1987. I had a close call in 1998 when a car in front of me suddenly dodged some concrete debris on the motorway, leaving me no time to avoid it and forcing me to take the hit. Yet, nobody I know has ever had any unpleasant encounter with Islamic terrorists.
Have you considered how disrespectful you are to the people who lost dear ones in traffic accidents? Or are they less worthy because they do not get the CNN live feed?
How many times did you experience a risky situation on the road? How many times have you run into Islamic terrorists?
Full-disk encryption is a tad too suspicious though. Yes, yes, it should not be this way, but someone is going to ask what he is hiding. So I would rather go for partition encryption, leaving the OS functional.
Just partition the HD so that there is some space left, use it for encrypted storage and mount the partition when you need it. I think we can safely assume that no border-control enforcer knows what a partition table is, and much less how to mount it; if they did they would have better jobs. And, if they really find out, it will look just like an unformatted partition. Just say that you got the partitioning wrong, or something like that.
And for the extra paranoid, remember to encrypt swap with a password scrambled at boot and to mount/tmp on tmpfs.
What makes you think that society was ever able to stop kids from having sex?
Well, for instance:
Gender segregation in schools
Extreme protection of females by their parents until married off (burqa anyone?)
No condoms, pills, or for that sake any knowledge about the process
Pregnancies could not be aborted
A man could repudiate his newly wed wife for not being a virgin (and possibly demand reparation for the insult)
Non-virgin women either grew to become beggars with no way of sustaining themselves, or were shipped to jail-like nunneries
Lack of social acceptance for illegitimate children (see the common usage of the word "bastard")
...
In that kind of society, of course people would pay attention and stay away from sex until marriages (well, women at least). A wrong move, and your life is completely fucked beyond repair (pun not intended, in fact it may be the origin of the expression...).
No, but you could still have Free/Net/Open BSD, though. So what, really, would be the loss?
A lot of Linux development is done by companies such as IBM and many others. They contribute back only because the GPL says it's the only way to play. Had it been BSD, they would rather keep their drivers (as they do in Windows), and distribute them with their hardware—it would be a binary blob nightmare. There are indeed binary blobs for Linux, but are more the exception than the rule.
Without the GPL, engineers cannot justify giving back code done on company time in front of their employers. Sure, BSD would be there, but would be nowhere as successful as Linux.
A lot of BSD developers are nice people, willing to give their work for nothing in return (no irony nor paternalism intended here; it's a good character trait); however, there are far more cheapskates around than white knights in shining armour.
The way you as a narrow special interest group define 'Free' as in 'Free Software' does not rhyme with how the majority of the world's population define the word 'Free'
As a matter of fact, the majority of the world population has different words for free-as-in-freedom and free-as-in-beer: for the languages I know, there is Italian (libero/gratuito), Norwegian (fri/gratis), German (frei/kostenlos). So it's really because of a glaring fault of the English language, and the last thing you can blame the FSF for is that they did not insist about free software being not (just) free as in free beer. Translation of "free software" is actually much simpler than the original version, since that lengthy explanation about freedom and not-for-pay is unnecessary.
As for Open Source, that's not a trademark as far as I know, but that is a term that everybody associates with the OSI. If you claim a software is open source when it is not fitting the OSI's definition, I think you should be sued. Call it shareware if you really want to use a commonly recognised buzzword.
Of course there are projects around that say they are open source when they are not; Scilab and OpenModelica come to mind. That is however no excuse.
Aside from the fact it is fairly likely a human did actually edit the translation, Norwegian (and all Scandinavian languages with it) has a syntax that is quite similar to English, except for some rules like the verb always in second position, as in German. (Yes, I speak Norwegian).
Slashdot Mirror
Even then, they should not have taken it. Either they ask him to hand in the laptop and he complies, or they report the issue to the police. Who do they think they are, vigilantes?
I'd like you to substantiate that. Teachers are no police officers and, especially if the institution is private, they are no legal representatives of authority. Even if they were, they would need the a judge's warrant, which I highly doubt the teacher in question sought. What that teacher allegedly did is seizure of property by intimidation, otherwise known as robbery, and the student would do well to report her to the police. Unless the parents signed a sort of transfer of their parenting rights to school personnel (which may be the case), teachers do not have any right to confiscate anything.
There are other implications to this game. Missile defense was forbidden by treaties between the US and the USSR (as that other guy said, however, treaties are just paper) because it would hollow out mutual assured destruction. If one of the two superpowers believed they had sufficient missile protection, there would have a been much lower threshold to start a nuclear war.
The only reason this is being developed by the US military is to enable nuclear attacks against nuclear-capable enemies. Forget about the crap about rogue states and terrorists, they could be pointing at pedophiles and it would be just as credible. Rogue states want nukes as deterrent material, so that the US know that attacking them may result in escalation; they are surely not as stupid as to start a nuclear war they are guaranteed to lose spectacularly.
The moment this system works will be the first time the US will be able to (credibly) point around the nuclear gun since Nagasaki, and you can be sure that it will freak people out.
A few years back we seemed to be headed towards a European constitution. The text was horribly formatted, there was no declaration of values as in most constitutions, it was so long no one could reasonably expected to read all that, and there was endless bitching from the Catholic church and their lackeys about inserting a paragraph about the continent's Christian roots, conveniently forgetting that modern democracy in Europe is mostly due to anti-clericals and that the Church has opposed pretty much any progress in civil rights (yesterday's news: they support killing gays in Iran and other religious cesspits).
However, that constitution was still better than nothing. Among other things, it finally gave power to the EU parliament, but who shot down the constitution? The French, in a national referendum. So, if anything, they are getting what they asked for—continued unaccountability of Brussels bureaucrats.
I have not yet seen someone mentioning it, so I might just report the concept of well-to-wheel efficiency, i.e. the efficiency from extraction until consumption in a vehicle. IIRC That's about 10% for the oil-to-gasoline cycle. That makes hydrogen a 140% improvement over current situation, and that's according to a critic.
You are right, and I think that's one of the reasons they are proposing plasma (look it up...). In that state of matter, all molecules break up, including dioxin and other poisonous compounds. However, what happens when you cool down the exhaust gases will depend a lot on the construction, so you might still get dioxin (or something worse than that); I suppose this is fairly implementation-dependent. Also, I am not so sure about what happens to particulate: does the cooling process create more of it, or does the plasma state break it down?
Has anyone done the math and compared the economic value of 60MW of electricity versus the value of the equivalent trash? I suppose you should account for sorting and recycling costs on one side, and for operating costs, plant capital costs and maintenance on both. Unfortunately I have no data on this so I cannot really argue for one alternative or the other.
Prosecutors do not decide what to prosecute in Italy. Felonies, when reported, must always be investigated. In this case, it was the ministry of Interior that sent in a complaint, and prosecutors are only doing their job. Should they decide to start a trial instead of archiving the case, then there will be a reason to insult them.
That was a comment that reeks Mafia all the way. Sure, some prosecutors are silly like there are silly people everywhere, but this kind of generalisation is typical of corrupt politicians who accuse prosecutors going after them of being politically motivated, as appearing in the press were the main aspiration of prosecutors (in case you did not know: we do not elect prosecutors nor judges here, so being known among the populace is no career advantage). There is much more money and career to be made by keeping quiet and pandering to illegal interests, as Corrado Carnevale exemplifies.
As for the specific case, I'd like to point out that in the Italian system felonies, once reported, must always be investigated and prosecuted, no matter the opinion of the prosecutor; it is a way of reducing arbitrary decisions and IMHO it is overall a Good Thing. As the article says, the decision to hold trial has not been made yet, and the chance that the prosecutor will ask for an archiving is not as small as you Americans may think; since all reported felonies must be investigated, dropping one is not a mark of incompetence on someone's career.
If I remember correctly, in this specific instance it was former justice minister Clemente Mastella, leader of a corruption-ridden micro-party and currently in political disgrace (the two things are unfortunately unrelated...) that was most vocal in calling for a ban on Youtube and Google video when the video surfaced, of course never suggesting that the people who uploaded the video and performed the assault should be investigated themselves.
In fact, I have no idea about what happened to the perpetrators. Surely I did not read nor hear anything on Italian media. It seems that all the fuss was about the thing being recorded and broadcast, instead of the crime itself.
And I gather that you never attended a course in economics of energy sources, because that statement is right on target. My professor in the subject insisted a lot on that point: conservation is the best energy source you can possibly get.
In fact, a lot of the political discourse in the West about energy policy is usually reduced to "how do we get more energy", instead of "how do we reduce our consumption", I suppose because we don't want to upset the people who profit from that consumption. It's great that at last someone starts to change at least the words used in the debate.
Please report immediately to decontamination area 4. Remember to burn all your clothes. Exposed items you wish to decontaminate must be collected in a sealed, transparent plastic bag and handed in to the paramedical personnel at your decontamination area.
Got as much. Yet, just because you can register, this can be turned into a requirement (see the old argument about the ID card being made de facto obligatory if required in enough places). Suppose your state administration is in the hands of the Coprolitan party, and you are trying to be on amicable terms with them (you need some sort of license for your business, or you work for the administration, or you want to be hired, whatever). Everybody knows that Coprolitan politicians are sleazy corrupt bastards, and will consider your allegiance when making decisions about you.
Are you going to register independent, or even register as a voter of the opposing Four-Unemployed-Losers-For-Freedom party, and jeopardise your economy and your family's? You shouldn't even come close to this kind of decision, there is a reason why ballots are anonymous.
Furthermore, aren't employment laws very "flexible" in America? What if some PHB, in layoff season, decides to fire people of the opposite political party?
Which is another weird thing. Why do states and public institutions meddle in the primary process of a party?
I voted in primary elections held my country (which is one of the great things we got from America, granted), and no one ever came close to the idea of involving any public office in the process. To vote, one had to give a minimal contribution of 1 euro and give proof of identity. Those were the first nation-wide primaries ever in my country, and 4,311,149 voted (including people abroad, like me: I voted in Stockholm), whereas just one million was considered a dream on the day before. All organised by the coalition that later won the elections, and worked just fine (except for a politician murdered on the way home from the vote).
Man, is this coming from America, the one country in the West where you the government is allowed to record your political affiliation when you register to vote?
Government registration of residence and workplace can be abused, but generally serves a number of legitimate purposes, as do ID cards (which are not a tool of the Big Brother, as some privacy Quixotes would have it). What is exactly the reason for the government knowing what you vote for?
Mmh, I see, so your strategy is getting them drunk so they will not fight back? Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Worse than that, only battleground-state citizen count at all. When is the last time California, New York, Utah or Texas got some attention from a presidential candidate? Instead, Ohio, Florida, Missouri and a few others steal all the show. I was reading on Obama's website for the state of Alaska, and I found out that their activism is *gasp* calling people in Colorado and Nevada!
The absurd thing is, I heard arguments going like "with the electoral college the candidates have to consider the countryside, not just the large cities"! But obviously, when campaigning in Florida and Ohio, candidates do concentrate on cities—that's where most people are. Plus, sparsely populated states like Idaho, Wyoming and Kansas will never get a visit because they are so skewed for one side.
Personally I find the electoral vote insulting: it makes the votes of the majority of the population of the US almost useless, since they already know who is going to win their state: this makes their vote useless not just in a predicted landslide (as the current election), but also in elections where it comes down to a few votes, like 2000 and 2004. And people wonder why so few Americans bother to vote at all?
Since for some reason the cliche' in American media is that the USA are the oldest functioning democracy on the world, you may actually learn something today: Finland is. Finland introduced universal suffrage and the right to run for office for women in 1906. The USA as a whole can be counted as a democracy since 1964, when the blacks in the South states were finally allowed to vote and run for office and poll taxes were abolished (though most states had universal suffrage and right to run, but there is no such thing as a democracy for the few).
Sad to see that a nation with such a history is going down the drain of electronic voting...
Guess what, someone in another thread is complaining about the overuse of "correlation is not causation", and here you go with a fine example of correlation having nothing to do with causation. The black vote has always been for the democrats in the last decades, and this time the democrat candidate happens to be black (halfway at least).
Since 90% of the blacks are voting for the presidential ticket with no women, are you inferring that blacks don't like boobs?
Er, what? Denmark was the quietest piece of Axis-occupied territory in Europe. I cannot recall a country occupied by Nazi Germany that offered so little resistance. I wonder where you got that factoid.
My father almost died in a traffic accident in 1987. I had a close call in 1998 when a car in front of me suddenly dodged some concrete debris on the motorway, leaving me no time to avoid it and forcing me to take the hit. Yet, nobody I know has ever had any unpleasant encounter with Islamic terrorists.
Have you considered how disrespectful you are to the people who lost dear ones in traffic accidents? Or are they less worthy because they do not get the CNN live feed?
How many times did you experience a risky situation on the road? How many times have you run into Islamic terrorists?
Full-disk encryption is a tad too suspicious though. Yes, yes, it should not be this way, but someone is going to ask what he is hiding. So I would rather go for partition encryption, leaving the OS functional.
Just partition the HD so that there is some space left, use it for encrypted storage and mount the partition when you need it. I think we can safely assume that no border-control enforcer knows what a partition table is, and much less how to mount it; if they did they would have better jobs. And, if they really find out, it will look just like an unformatted partition. Just say that you got the partitioning wrong, or something like that.
And for the extra paranoid, remember to encrypt swap with a password scrambled at boot and to mount /tmp on tmpfs.
Well, for instance:
In that kind of society, of course people would pay attention and stay away from sex until marriages (well, women at least). A wrong move, and your life is completely fucked beyond repair (pun not intended, in fact it may be the origin of the expression...).
A lot of Linux development is done by companies such as IBM and many others. They contribute back only because the GPL says it's the only way to play. Had it been BSD, they would rather keep their drivers (as they do in Windows), and distribute them with their hardware—it would be a binary blob nightmare. There are indeed binary blobs for Linux, but are more the exception than the rule.
Without the GPL, engineers cannot justify giving back code done on company time in front of their employers. Sure, BSD would be there, but would be nowhere as successful as Linux.
A lot of BSD developers are nice people, willing to give their work for nothing in return (no irony nor paternalism intended here; it's a good character trait); however, there are far more cheapskates around than white knights in shining armour.
As a matter of fact, the majority of the world population has different words for free-as-in-freedom and free-as-in-beer: for the languages I know, there is Italian (libero/gratuito), Norwegian (fri/gratis), German (frei/kostenlos). So it's really because of a glaring fault of the English language, and the last thing you can blame the FSF for is that they did not insist about free software being not (just) free as in free beer. Translation of "free software" is actually much simpler than the original version, since that lengthy explanation about freedom and not-for-pay is unnecessary.
As for Open Source, that's not a trademark as far as I know, but that is a term that everybody associates with the OSI. If you claim a software is open source when it is not fitting the OSI's definition, I think you should be sued. Call it shareware if you really want to use a commonly recognised buzzword.
Of course there are projects around that say they are open source when they are not; Scilab and OpenModelica come to mind. That is however no excuse.
Aside from the fact it is fairly likely a human did actually edit the translation, Norwegian (and all Scandinavian languages with it) has a syntax that is quite similar to English, except for some rules like the verb always in second position, as in German. (Yes, I speak Norwegian).