We all know that the reason to have a moon base is to build a libertarian utopia.
Some actual serious reasons: 1. We'd get off this rock for more than a quick visit. If you're looking at major achievements of humanity, I'd think that would definitely rank somewhere significant. 2. Because we'd be off this rock, we'd have a good environment to test handling that sort of thing from an engineering standpoint, with the possibility of a much more manageable return if something were to go wrong. Important questions like "how do we handle the issue of solar radiation", "Can we grow enough plants in controlled environments to sustain an off-Earth colony", and so forth. 3. Heck, I'd pay good money to walk on the moon.
In short, this sort of thing isn't about making cash, it's about taking yet another small step for mankind. Yes, that requires looking past your lifetime, but that doesn't mean it's not worth doing.
Water is good news. I'm sure there's going to be lots of water reclamation equipment for any base we do end up building, but having external sources of water is a definite plus.
Re:And they couldn't afford a better domain name?
on
eBay For Millionaires
·
· Score: 1, Funny
They should have called it "billionairesexchange.com" instead (look closely, you'll get it).
Except that doesn't actually work in the case of an oligopoly, which is what the cell service market is (even more so now that Alltel was bought out by Verizon).
What actually ends up happening is that if AT&T engages in outrageously ripping off their customers, and remotely gets away with it, Verizon and Sprint follow suit, because it's more profitable to rip off customers than it is to engage in actual competitive behavior (e.g. improving service or lowering prices).
In a more competitive market with a lower barrier to entry, another company would come in and offer lower prices and/or better service. But for a whole lot of reasons, that can't happen in the cell phone market.
Give PBS its due as well. If you want to see a TV news show that takes the announcer out of the story, go no further than Newshour.
And if you want to see the difference in personality that brings, consider the difference between presidential debates moderated by Jim Lehrer and presidential debates moderated by NBC. An example: Lehrer: Gentlemen [Obama and McCain], at this very moment tonight, where do you stand on the financial recovery plan?
Tim Russert, NBC: Now, did you [Dennis Kucinich] see a UFO?
They've done studies on comparing those who watch The Daily Show with those who watch news on Fox, CNN, and NBC. Those who watch The Daily Show are better informed.
The interesting thing is that they often tell a very serious story in a funny way. For example, Jason Jones was in Iran during the electoral turmoil, but was (in addition to covering the election) having lots of discussions with ordinary Iranians which were countering the whole "all Iranians hate America" propaganda. By contrasting the very reasonable Iranians he was talking to with a voice over of "These people are evil", not only was he reporting a story but also making a point about US news coverage of Iran.
To quote Jon Stewart on Crossfire: "You know, it's interesting to hear you [Tucker Carlson] talk about my responsibility. I didn't realize that -- and maybe this explains quite a bit... is that the news organizations look to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity.... But my point is this. If your idea of confronting me is that I don't ask hard-hitting enough news questions, we're in bad shape, fellows." So whether or not the general public thinks of The Daily Show as doing roughly the same thing as a standard news broadcast, CNN apparently does.
I absolutely agree with you. My point is that the copyright is essentially useless to the actual musicians of the world, and that any idea that the reason for strong copyright is to protect musicians is simply bogus.
The Master Control Program has chosen you to serve your system on the Game Grid. Those of you who continue to profess a belief in the Users will receive the standard substandard training, which will result in your eventual elimination. Those of you who renounce this superstitious and hysterical belief will be eligible to join the Warrior Elite of the MCP. You will each receive an identity disc. [displays a disc to the crowd] Everything you do or learn will be imprinted on this disc. If you lose your disc or fail to follow commands, you will be subject to immediate de-resolution.
Hey now. Don't leave out FirstEnergy Corp, which managed to (through poor maintenance combined with efforts to hide rather than fix problems) take out electricity for Ohio, Ontario, Quebec, New York, Pennsylvania, and New England in 2003.
In fact, good accurate garbage collections could be considered the most important development in programming languages since OO (and some even think more important). For instance, without garbage collection, this will (eventually) destroy the universe (where Foo and Baz are some classes): return Foo(somearg).bar(someotherarg);
Compare that to the non-GC'd version: foo = Foo(somearg); result = foo.bar(someotherarg); delete foo; return result;
The second version is 4 times as long, but with no added benefit other than saving a bit of memory until the next GC run.
That's why you have to balance personal freedoms. Since state-sponsored genital mutilation is greater imposition on freedom than being raped (yes, it's traumatic, but if you had a choice between being raped and being mutilated you'd probably choose being raped), that's not reasonable.
I suspect it's simply a matter of when they thought to do it.
IndyMedia tends to have info on a lot of things that the fascist types find inconvenient, such as what weapons were being deployed against protesters in Pittsburgh during the G20 summit and videos of police beating up people who aren't threatening them. By looking at the visitor logs, they can find out who's finding out about their not-so-legal activities, and oppress accordingly.
In other words, this has "chilling effect" written all over it.
If you give me your attention, I will tell you what I am. I'm a brilliant math'matician - also something of a ham. I have tried for numerous degrees, in fact I've one of each; Of course that makes me eminently qualified to teach. I understand the subject matter thoroughly, it's true, And I can't see why it isn't all as obvious to you. Each lecture is a masterpiece, meticulously planned, Yet everybody tells me that I'm hard to understand, And I can't think why.
My diagrams are models of true art, you must agree, And my handwriting is famous for its legibility. Take a word like "minimum" (to choose a random word), {This was performed at a blackboard, and the professor wrote an incomprehensible squiggle} For anyone to say he cannot read that, is absurd. The anecdotes I tell get more amusing every year, Though frankly, what they go to prove is sometimes less than clear, And all my explanations are quite lucid, I am sure, Yet everybody tells me that my lectures are obscure, And I can't think why.
Consider, for example, just the force of gravity: It's inversely proportional to something - let me see - It's r^3 - no, r^2 - no, it's just r, I'll bet - The sign in front is plus - or is it minus, I forget - Well, anyway, there is a force, of that there is no doubt. All these formulas are trivial if you only think them out. Yet students tell me, "I have memorized the whole year through Ev'rything you've told us, but the problems I can't do." And I can't think why!
Well, the "very little travel" and "dark nights" don't sound to bad, really. "Very little travel" could also mean "live someplace I actually want to spend my time", and "dark nights" could also mean "get plenty of sleep for a change" or "appreciate moonlight and starlight again". Humans managed reasonably well with both of those restrictions for thousands of years.
Even the "cold homes" part is a problem that can be mitigated. In Germany in particular, new housing is getting designed to avoid losing heat unless someone opens the door. Doing that cuts heating costs dramatically. Many historical home designs were also focused around avoiding heat loss.
The most important thing that any tech worker can do when reporting to executives who aren't themselves techies is to take the presentation and replace any word that is remotely technical with "tech". Then you'll get an idea of what the executives actually hear. Here's an example of a typical sysadmin issue report with that translation in place: "Our tech tech stopped working at 2:35 AM due to tech tech being tech."
What the sysadmin probably reported was perfectly true: "Our web farm stopped working at 2:35 AM due to OS patches being applied."
Whereas what the sysadmin really need to explain was that what happened at 2:35 AM was similar to what happens when a box pops up saying "Windows has automatic updates"...
Re:While I don't have any use for the program
on
Microsoft COFEE Leaked
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Well, that sort of thing comes from the idea that if we don't tell kids about sex then they won't have it. You know, unlike their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents.
It used to be that when you scrambled your way to the top, you had to keep scrambling because someone young and hungry was coming up behind you.
It's worth noting that one of the factors in making it possible to "scramble to the top" that is no longer true is that executives were once nearly always people who had been promoted up through the ranks at the company that they worked for throughout their careers, whereas now it is quite common for people to be hired in at the VP or CxO level. This has a lot of implications, a few of the more important ones being:
1. Executives are more likely to be identify with other company's executives than lower-ranked employees at their own firm. For instance, John Sculley owed his career to executives at Pepsi, not engineers at Apple.
2. Executives are more able to jump ship or be pushed out and expect to land in a similar position to the one they previously held. So, say, Carly Fiorina could trash HP without worrying about her future career there, because if she got fired from HP she would have a good shot at getting a CxO-level job at another company. Without the pattern of hiring outside people in as executives, she'd be taking a much larger personal income hit at her next job.
3. If an executive screws up big time, they're likely to be replaced not by their possibly more competent subordinate but by someone who screwed up at a similar level in another firm.
All of these serve to insulate current executives from the consequences of their decisions while making it harder for more competent employees to move up. It also enables people with poor job skills but very good networking and interviewing skills to "fail upwards", because they could go from being an incompetent VP at company A to an incompetent CxO at company B (because company B doesn't know about the incompetence at company A).
Part and parcel of choice C, though, is in this case continuing to sell cars you don't have.
Unless some sort of SLA is built into the standard consumer contract, which I highly highly doubt, the real kicker is that cell phone service isn't guaranteed at all, and in fact the only thing preventing AT&T from not providing any bandwidth for data is the possibility that people will jump to another carrier. AT&T would love to be in the business of selling nothing to people, because nothing is extremely cheap to produce.
For some reason the people they "identify" via this sort of method are almost never wealthy, white, particularly pretty, or powerful. That way, a stink is never raised, and the authorities in question can continue to abuse their power.
For people who think like that, detaining Edward Kennedy at the airport wasn't an embarrassment because they detained someone without cause, but because it called attention to the fact that they were (and are) detaining people without cause. This is in a similar vein to the people who think that what went wrong at Abu Ghraib was that the pictures became public.
Slashdot Mirror
We all know that the reason to have a moon base is to build a libertarian utopia.
Some actual serious reasons:
1. We'd get off this rock for more than a quick visit. If you're looking at major achievements of humanity, I'd think that would definitely rank somewhere significant.
2. Because we'd be off this rock, we'd have a good environment to test handling that sort of thing from an engineering standpoint, with the possibility of a much more manageable return if something were to go wrong. Important questions like "how do we handle the issue of solar radiation", "Can we grow enough plants in controlled environments to sustain an off-Earth colony", and so forth.
3. Heck, I'd pay good money to walk on the moon.
In short, this sort of thing isn't about making cash, it's about taking yet another small step for mankind. Yes, that requires looking past your lifetime, but that doesn't mean it's not worth doing.
Water is good news. I'm sure there's going to be lots of water reclamation equipment for any base we do end up building, but having external sources of water is a definite plus.
They should have called it "billionairesexchange.com" instead (look closely, you'll get it).
Except that doesn't actually work in the case of an oligopoly, which is what the cell service market is (even more so now that Alltel was bought out by Verizon).
What actually ends up happening is that if AT&T engages in outrageously ripping off their customers, and remotely gets away with it, Verizon and Sprint follow suit, because it's more profitable to rip off customers than it is to engage in actual competitive behavior (e.g. improving service or lowering prices).
In a more competitive market with a lower barrier to entry, another company would come in and offer lower prices and/or better service. But for a whole lot of reasons, that can't happen in the cell phone market.
Give PBS its due as well. If you want to see a TV news show that takes the announcer out of the story, go no further than Newshour.
And if you want to see the difference in personality that brings, consider the difference between presidential debates moderated by Jim Lehrer and presidential debates moderated by NBC. An example:
Lehrer: Gentlemen [Obama and McCain], at this very moment tonight, where do you stand on the financial recovery plan?
Tim Russert, NBC: Now, did you [Dennis Kucinich] see a UFO?
They've done studies on comparing those who watch The Daily Show with those who watch news on Fox, CNN, and NBC. Those who watch The Daily Show are better informed.
The interesting thing is that they often tell a very serious story in a funny way. For example, Jason Jones was in Iran during the electoral turmoil, but was (in addition to covering the election) having lots of discussions with ordinary Iranians which were countering the whole "all Iranians hate America" propaganda. By contrasting the very reasonable Iranians he was talking to with a voice over of "These people are evil", not only was he reporting a story but also making a point about US news coverage of Iran.
To quote Jon Stewart on Crossfire: ... is that the news organizations look to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity. ... But my point is this. If your idea of confronting me is that I don't ask hard-hitting enough news questions, we're in bad shape, fellows."
"You know, it's interesting to hear you [Tucker Carlson] talk about my responsibility. I didn't realize that -- and maybe this explains quite a bit
So whether or not the general public thinks of The Daily Show as doing roughly the same thing as a standard news broadcast, CNN apparently does.
(Late on the thread, I know)
I absolutely agree with you. My point is that the copyright is essentially useless to the actual musicians of the world, and that any idea that the reason for strong copyright is to protect musicians is simply bogus.
The Master Control Program has chosen you to serve your system on the Game Grid. Those of you who continue to profess a belief in the Users will receive the standard substandard training, which will result in your eventual elimination. Those of you who renounce this superstitious and hysterical belief will be eligible to join the Warrior Elite of the MCP. You will each receive an identity disc. [displays a disc to the crowd] Everything you do or learn will be imprinted on this disc. If you lose your disc or fail to follow commands, you will be subject to immediate de-resolution.
So in other words, this isn't a count of how many vulnerabilities there are, it's a count of how many vulnerabilities are found and fixed.
Something tells me their methodology is a bit flawed. Of course, that's by design, given Cenzic's financial ties to Microsoft.
Hey now. Don't leave out FirstEnergy Corp, which managed to (through poor maintenance combined with efforts to hide rather than fix problems) take out electricity for Ohio, Ontario, Quebec, New York, Pennsylvania, and New England in 2003.
Oh, right. put a "new " in front of both those and it will be a memory leak.
In fact, good accurate garbage collections could be considered the most important development in programming languages since OO (and some even think more important). For instance, without garbage collection, this will (eventually) destroy the universe (where Foo and Baz are some classes):
return Foo(somearg).bar(someotherarg);
Compare that to the non-GC'd version:
foo = Foo(somearg);
result = foo.bar(someotherarg);
delete foo;
return result;
The second version is 4 times as long, but with no added benefit other than saving a bit of memory until the next GC run.
Ahh, you said the word the Knights who say Ni cannot hear!
That's why you have to balance personal freedoms. Since state-sponsored genital mutilation is greater imposition on freedom than being raped (yes, it's traumatic, but if you had a choice between being raped and being mutilated you'd probably choose being raped), that's not reasonable.
I suspect it's simply a matter of when they thought to do it.
IndyMedia tends to have info on a lot of things that the fascist types find inconvenient, such as what weapons were being deployed against protesters in Pittsburgh during the G20 summit and videos of police beating up people who aren't threatening them. By looking at the visitor logs, they can find out who's finding out about their not-so-legal activities, and oppress accordingly.
In other words, this has "chilling effect" written all over it.
Reminds me of this little ditty:
If you give me your attention, I will tell you what I am.
I'm a brilliant math'matician - also something of a ham.
I have tried for numerous degrees, in fact I've one of each;
Of course that makes me eminently qualified to teach.
I understand the subject matter thoroughly, it's true,
And I can't see why it isn't all as obvious to you.
Each lecture is a masterpiece, meticulously planned,
Yet everybody tells me that I'm hard to understand,
And I can't think why.
My diagrams are models of true art, you must agree,
And my handwriting is famous for its legibility.
Take a word like "minimum" (to choose a random word),
{This was performed at a blackboard, and the professor wrote an incomprehensible squiggle}
For anyone to say he cannot read that, is absurd.
The anecdotes I tell get more amusing every year,
Though frankly, what they go to prove is sometimes less than clear,
And all my explanations are quite lucid, I am sure,
Yet everybody tells me that my lectures are obscure,
And I can't think why.
Consider, for example, just the force of gravity:
It's inversely proportional to something - let me see -
It's r^3 - no, r^2 - no, it's just r, I'll bet -
The sign in front is plus - or is it minus, I forget -
Well, anyway, there is a force, of that there is no doubt.
All these formulas are trivial if you only think them out.
Yet students tell me, "I have memorized the whole year through
Ev'rything you've told us, but the problems I can't do."
And I can't think why!
-Tom Lehrer
Don't worry: Justice Thomas will change his mind if Justice Scalia changes his first.
Any resident of Chicago or Boston would agree with that, I'm sure.
The plan is called "Sartre". My first reaction: What if there's No Exit?
Well, the "very little travel" and "dark nights" don't sound to bad, really. "Very little travel" could also mean "live someplace I actually want to spend my time", and "dark nights" could also mean "get plenty of sleep for a change" or "appreciate moonlight and starlight again". Humans managed reasonably well with both of those restrictions for thousands of years.
Even the "cold homes" part is a problem that can be mitigated. In Germany in particular, new housing is getting designed to avoid losing heat unless someone opens the door. Doing that cuts heating costs dramatically. Many historical home designs were also focused around avoiding heat loss.
A sorta similar situation was discussed over at the daily WTF.
The most important thing that any tech worker can do when reporting to executives who aren't themselves techies is to take the presentation and replace any word that is remotely technical with "tech". Then you'll get an idea of what the executives actually hear. Here's an example of a typical sysadmin issue report with that translation in place:
"Our tech tech stopped working at 2:35 AM due to tech tech being tech."
What the sysadmin probably reported was perfectly true:
"Our web farm stopped working at 2:35 AM due to OS patches being applied."
Whereas what the sysadmin really need to explain was that what happened at 2:35 AM was similar to what happens when a box pops up saying "Windows has automatic updates" ...
Well, that sort of thing comes from the idea that if we don't tell kids about sex then they won't have it. You know, unlike their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents.
It used to be that when you scrambled your way to the top, you had to keep scrambling because someone young and hungry was coming up behind you.
It's worth noting that one of the factors in making it possible to "scramble to the top" that is no longer true is that executives were once nearly always people who had been promoted up through the ranks at the company that they worked for throughout their careers, whereas now it is quite common for people to be hired in at the VP or CxO level. This has a lot of implications, a few of the more important ones being:
1. Executives are more likely to be identify with other company's executives than lower-ranked employees at their own firm. For instance, John Sculley owed his career to executives at Pepsi, not engineers at Apple.
2. Executives are more able to jump ship or be pushed out and expect to land in a similar position to the one they previously held. So, say, Carly Fiorina could trash HP without worrying about her future career there, because if she got fired from HP she would have a good shot at getting a CxO-level job at another company. Without the pattern of hiring outside people in as executives, she'd be taking a much larger personal income hit at her next job.
3. If an executive screws up big time, they're likely to be replaced not by their possibly more competent subordinate but by someone who screwed up at a similar level in another firm.
All of these serve to insulate current executives from the consequences of their decisions while making it harder for more competent employees to move up. It also enables people with poor job skills but very good networking and interviewing skills to "fail upwards", because they could go from being an incompetent VP at company A to an incompetent CxO at company B (because company B doesn't know about the incompetence at company A).
Part and parcel of choice C, though, is in this case continuing to sell cars you don't have.
Unless some sort of SLA is built into the standard consumer contract, which I highly highly doubt, the real kicker is that cell phone service isn't guaranteed at all, and in fact the only thing preventing AT&T from not providing any bandwidth for data is the possibility that people will jump to another carrier. AT&T would love to be in the business of selling nothing to people, because nothing is extremely cheap to produce.
For some reason the people they "identify" via this sort of method are almost never wealthy, white, particularly pretty, or powerful. That way, a stink is never raised, and the authorities in question can continue to abuse their power.
For people who think like that, detaining Edward Kennedy at the airport wasn't an embarrassment because they detained someone without cause, but because it called attention to the fact that they were (and are) detaining people without cause. This is in a similar vein to the people who think that what went wrong at Abu Ghraib was that the pictures became public.