Why does Jeff Merkey rate a Wikipedia page at all? I know him as a guy who makes wild drunken posts to lkml from time to time.
Because people might read one of his wild crazy posts about buying the Linux Kernel under a commercial license and want to know who that crackpot is:) Then they can find out that he used to work at Novell, allegedly stole trade secrets to form his own company, spent $4 million in the ensuing litigation, and founded his own Native American church in Utah so people can smoke peyote legally.
So believing in science and logic means being unwilling to allow for even the possibility of some non-physical thing "outside" of science?
No. Nothing is really "outside" of science. If things actually affect our world, as Astrology claims to, then science should be able to find the reason for it. The problem is that things like are simply ludicrous. Your very sign is based on the position of the sun when you were born. The problem is that the same chart we use now is no longer valid because of the wobble of the Earth. The sun no longer rises in Leo in August for example. Why do we believe them then? It's because they are so vague that we can find kernels of truth in them just like the bible. A group of people were handed sealed envelopes with personalized horoscopes created for their exact date of birth. When rating how closely the horoscopes matched them as a person, about 1/2 gave it a 3/4 match and the other half a perfect 4/4 match. They were fooled because despite having widely different dates of birth, they were given copies of the same horoscope.
If there's no "creator" "outside" of the universe, then, according to the principle of cause and effect that lies at the heart of so much of science and logic, not only should the universe not be there, not only should there be nothing, but even the nothing shouldn't be there.
Doesn't believing in a universe which created itself require an even greater belief in miracles than any of the religious explanations?
What makes you think so? Who created the creator? Whatever answer you give can be applied to the Universe, there is no need to invoke a creator. Any creator theory I've heard seems ridiculous when looking at the actual Universe. Supposedly the whole thing was "created" for the benefit of humans. Humans don't appear for 13 billion years for one thing. Just think about that and look at "The Cosmic Calender". If one calendar represents the entire history of the universe, anatomically modern humans wouldn't appear until just six minutes before midnight on December 31. Writing wouldn't be discovered until 15 seconds before midnight, ergo no Bible before that.
Now imagine a 3,000 mile trip, about the distance from New York to L.A. Now walk along and pack that distance with human hairs small enough that you can pack 1,000 in every inch. When you're done you will have placed about 190 billion hairs, an approximation of the number of stars in our galaxy. Now on the trip back place another 1,000 hairs in every inch you pass. That'll be about 190 billion hairs also, which is a good approximation of the number of galaxies in the Universe. The same being that created all of that though only really cares about the one hair from the first trip, which is just 1/190,000,000,000th of one of the hairs in the return trip?
You might not like that, but there you have humanity's 'special' place in the Universe. One out of 190 billion stars in one out of 190 billion galaxies and only existing for six minutes if the history of the universe is an entire year.
Is that seriously the main flaw you find with this law?
Brian Gordon
Yes.
Your first quote would make it seem that you are against laws that make people criminals for things that shouldn't be crimes, yet you are saying that the main flaw is that it isn't enforceable. Are you taking the side of the theoretical "oppressive" government?
Does this also mean that, given time, all the space debris around the earth will clutter in a ring?
I doubt it. Wouldn't our large moon is too much of an influence for a stable ring to form? Also the sparser the debris field, the longer the process will take since objects will not make contact that often. I think Most satellites would lose enough energy in a collision of this type to fall back to Earth.
In a civil case, don't they usually subpoena records? They don't come into your house and search for them, you are simply expected to hand them over. Say for instance that they subpoenaed letters I had received over a certain period. I would check my files and turn over any letters that met the criteria, along with a declaration I sign under penalty of perjury that I've turned over all relevant documents. In the RIAA case they get to mirror an entire hard drive and search through all contents. There was indication in the testimony of the 'expert' in the Lindor case that he had gone through emails and documents, he even referenced a resume he found on the hard drive. All they were looking for supposedly was evidence of infringement and use of Kazaa, which they did NOT find.
Computers are used for everything nowadays. Allowing unfettered access to a computer's hard drive would be like allowing them into your home to look around for whatever they want. Nowadays you can watch movies and listen to music on your computer, make phone calls, purchase almost anything on line, reserve movie tickets, and communicate with email and IM. Allowing access to this information if little different than searching a house. You can find what clothes they wear by looking at online purchase history or receipts stored on the computer. You can possibly find their bank records showing ATM withdrawals from a casino for instance or a sex shop. Going through their email is akin to looking over personal letters and birthday cards. Allowing access to a hard drive in my opinion is not narrow enough of a discovery request.
Here's another story that explains it better with figures to back it up. Hollywood actually shipped 30 million more DVDs than in 2006, but they were cheaper as is to be expected of a maturing technology. The general problems in the economy are another reason for the dip. Also half of the $600 million or so drop could be taken away if you count the $300 million in next-gen bluray and HD-DVD movies sold. The $1.7 billion on subscriptions like Netflix is included in the $23.4 bilion total as is the $700 million or so download market I believe. I don't know why they count the $300 million next-gen disc total differently.
So they have 'observations' of a 'simulation' of a Bose-Einstein Condensate which 'theoretically' would behave with sound waves similarly to the way a black hole is 'theorized' to behave with regard to particles that pop into existence all the time and it's proof of Hawking radiation? There are just too many theoretical leaps here to give it any weight. If these sound waves were ACTUALLY observed in a real-world experiment and not a simulation then that would be a step closer. Can't they just make a simulation of the event horizon of a black hole?
The problem with those decrying the Bible is that most of them have never read it so they know stuff all about it.
The problem with those embracing the Bible is that most of them have never read it either. It is an amalgam of different stories that contradict each other. Any serious theologian that has studied the Bible does not believe in the literalness of the text. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence that does the same will immediately see the contradictory and ridiculous nature of it. So we are left with the stories that people can pick points of truth from to suit their own needs. It is much like astrology, people only see the parts that could be true and ignore the rest (talking snakes, dancing swords, Adam would be like God if he had eaten one more piece of fruit, etc.). There is actually no credible evidence for the miracles in the Bible or any prophecies coming true after they were written. Most scholars believe that the book of Isaiah had several authors and minor editors, with a noted change in authorship at chapter 40 (based on his name not being used, the situation changing and style).
Archeology backs up most of the Bible so it's not just a book to be taken on faith.
I would agree with this to the extent that archeology can back up the movie 'Spiderman' in that I'm pretty sure New York city actually exists. Anything supernatural in the bible is not backed up by archaeological evidence, for instance the great flood.
The purpose of the GPL was supposed to be that non-open source can't directly call into GPLed code to avoid compatibility problems if the open source code changed.
No, the purpose of the GPL is best explained in its preamble:
The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program--to make sure it remains free software for all its users.
If you allow linking of this sort then you allow people to possibly use GPL software under a different license. For instance, Microsoft would take whatever GPL code they wish from Linux, wrap it in a binary interface, and include it in their operating system as long as they released the source code for just those portions. You still couldn't use the GPL code without paying Microsoft for their non-free code.
IMHO, the GPL is a BAD license precisely because it causes fights like this to break out with regularity.
It would be better also because the data (which shows 10.7 years) is for age 75, so if he made it to 77 he would have already crossed a hurdle. He would be 77.5 though and with 85.7 being the life expectancy at age 75, that would give him almost exactly 8 years. Anyway the point is not to try and find the date of his death, which is impossible, but simply to point out that it would be a very real possibility. There's a big difference in health between 65 year olds and 75 year olds.
And Dover, PA is only 50 miles from the coast. Just because California is a bunch of tree-hugging hippy queers doesn't mean that the midwest is all bible-thumping rednecks:)
He was saying that RP could win NEXT election. He has a point too.
Actually Ron Paul would have been 73 when he took office in 2009. Ronald Reagan is the current record holder, he was 69 when he took office. In four more years Ron Paul would be 77, as old as Reagan when he left office. I think if you are a white male and have lived to age 75, your life expectancy is about another 11 years. Does that mean Ron Paul would have about a 50% chance of not dieing in office?
I think the wait is mostly due to people with overhead baggage. If you let others board first then other people like me could simply go to our seats, sit down and open a book or magazine. Then let the overheaders in and wait 30 minutes while they block the aisles for each other. Make them exit the plane last also, I think the rest of the plane could empty in about two minutes. If you lined up everyone without overhead baggage by row and sent them all onto the plane it would be boarded in no time flat. You could even line the others up by row and it would take less time since they wouldn't be blocking the fast passengers. To maximize efficiency there should be preferential treatment so that overheaders sat on one side of the plane so the fast people didn't have to move over them to get out. They could still put their baggage on either side so it wouldn't be a weight problem.
That doesn't meet the requirements of Occam's Razor: "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best." "it's probably Sol's fault" isn't a solution in that it doesn't explain climate change that we've been seeing. Take a look at solar output over the last 30 years. Then take a look at temperature graphs. You cannot make the one explain the other, so you have to disregard it as a valid solution. Now look at a graph of carbon dioxide levels and see how well it matches the temperature graph.
Using Occam's razor, CO2 levels causing the rise in temperatures is the simplest solution that actually fits with observed data.
Why would you bring up climate change? We've known for many years that the Sun flips its magnetic field every 11 years or so. This is simply the first time we've observed it in another star. The flipping of Sol's magnetic field causes a change in the number and size of sunspots which do affect solar output. This has been taken into account with climate models that show the earth is warming due to human influence. This news story offers absolutely no information pertinent to climate change.
I would like to point out that there are so very many things that we are not sure of or simply don't know.
Because we do not know some things does not mean we cannot know others. The fact that the theory of General Relativity does not work at atomic distances does not mean that we can't use it to determine clock skew in different gravity fields. GPS would not work without taking General Relativity into account if you want proof you can hold in your hand. Because we do not know everything about Quantum Mechanics does not mean that we cannot use the theory to create lasers, which are a direct result of quantum mechanical theory. You would not have CD and DVD drives if the theory wasn't mostly correct.
What you are basically saying is that we should throw up our hands and say that whether climate change is occurring due to human influence is unknowable. That sounds nothing like an 'INFORMED decision' as you put it. If you are truly interested, do some research yourself. I questioned man's influence on climate change also until I looked into it. Researchers who study the subject are almost completely of one mind, that humanity is influencing the climate and causing the world to be warmer that it has been in the past. These are people that spend their lives looking at all of the evidence, people that ask the questions you want the answers to and try their best to find them. The people that just throw their hands up and say that it is unknowable are the ones that deny global warming is happening. Some point to one of the warmest years on record being in the 1940s, but that is explainable due to normal cycles. Check out the trends though. Global warming is a FACT, that human influence is causing it is a theory with mountains of evidence supporting it and no evidence against it. The only other thing that people can point to as the cause for global warming is "something we don't know yet".
Their site is amazing! It shows all of the instruments and links to the data they've provided directly. For instance, the DUST instrument measures dust impact events (imagine that). You can use the heliocentric latitude and longitude for these thousands of events to track the spacecraft position throughout it's 17 year journey. A nice readme file explains the structure of the data file. That's just one of the 12 scientific instruments. Very cool stuff...
On another note, why are people saying four times as long as they expected? 17 years is closer to three times the original five years than four. You can't really say it's lasted four times as long as expected until after it has lasted 20 years.
Considering that the need for Dark Energy to explain the expansion of the universe is in question, I don't know. We know very little about Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Now we hear that our own galaxy might be twice as thick as we previously thought. Dark Energy and Dark Matter are added to observed data to come up with models to explain observations. I'm thinking if 75% of the energy in the model is no longer required to explain observations and the 4% of free hydrogen and helium might be doubled that maybe we should take a look at the 25% that is Dark Matter as well.
Mormons knew this already. When they die, they get a world of their very own. The reason they take multiple wives is because they have to populate the entire world by themselves.
[...] while we won't pretend to understand all the nitty gritty of dye usage and other such nonsense, we do know that such a system could eventually attain 15% or so efficiency, providing a nice and clean way to gather power for that fuel cell car of the future.
So they don't even pretend to understand how it works, but they know it can eventually attain 15% or so efficiency.
This just goes to show that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies will do ANYTHING that they are allowed to do. Give them an inch and they'll take a mile. They will abuse the authority and law enforcement tools given to them until they are finally reigned in. Look how they are using tazers to tame nonviolent drunks. They are basically torturing our own citizens into submitting to 'authority' now. That is unacceptable to me. This is why we shouldn't have a national ID card. This is why the mislabeled 'patriot' act was a bad idea. This is why we shouldn't have a national DNA database. This is why you should not submit to being fingerprinted or having your DNA taken unless they have a warrant. Sure it is only to 'help' their investigation, but the only way it would really help is if they found or planted a match. Cops will search through your trash. They will follow you for days waiting for you to discard a coffee cup so they can get your DNA. Watch Forensic Files or Law and Order. Those shows probably paint a rosy picture compared to the dirty underbelly of real law enforcement.
Requests for satellite images will be vetted even more than they were when the requests went through the Civil Applications Committee. All requests will be reviewed by an interagency group that includes Justice Department officials to ensure civil rights and civil liberties are not violated.
Is this the same "justice" department that said torture was OK? Is this the same "justice" department that rushed to the hospital to see if the incapacitated attorney general would overrule the acting head's concerns about warrantless wiretapping?
Iraq: $200 billion / year (plus around $500 billion / year for the standard military budget)
Hydrocarbon Reserves
Entire Earth (including Iraq): 1
Titan: 100
Imagine getting to Titan though. The first order of business would be prospecting for pockets of Oxygen in the crust to let you create energy from all of those hydrocarbons...
Slashdot Mirror
Because people might read one of his wild crazy posts about buying the Linux Kernel under a commercial license and want to know who that crackpot is :) Then they can find out that he used to work at Novell, allegedly stole trade secrets to form his own company, spent $4 million in the ensuing litigation, and founded his own Native American church in Utah so people can smoke peyote legally.
No. Nothing is really "outside" of science. If things actually affect our world, as Astrology claims to, then science should be able to find the reason for it. The problem is that things like are simply ludicrous. Your very sign is based on the position of the sun when you were born. The problem is that the same chart we use now is no longer valid because of the wobble of the Earth. The sun no longer rises in Leo in August for example. Why do we believe them then? It's because they are so vague that we can find kernels of truth in them just like the bible. A group of people were handed sealed envelopes with personalized horoscopes created for their exact date of birth. When rating how closely the horoscopes matched them as a person, about 1/2 gave it a 3/4 match and the other half a perfect 4/4 match. They were fooled because despite having widely different dates of birth, they were given copies of the same horoscope.
What makes you think so? Who created the creator? Whatever answer you give can be applied to the Universe, there is no need to invoke a creator. Any creator theory I've heard seems ridiculous when looking at the actual Universe. Supposedly the whole thing was "created" for the benefit of humans. Humans don't appear for 13 billion years for one thing. Just think about that and look at "The Cosmic Calender". If one calendar represents the entire history of the universe, anatomically modern humans wouldn't appear until just six minutes before midnight on December 31. Writing wouldn't be discovered until 15 seconds before midnight, ergo no Bible before that.
Now imagine a 3,000 mile trip, about the distance from New York to L.A. Now walk along and pack that distance with human hairs small enough that you can pack 1,000 in every inch. When you're done you will have placed about 190 billion hairs, an approximation of the number of stars in our galaxy. Now on the trip back place another 1,000 hairs in every inch you pass. That'll be about 190 billion hairs also, which is a good approximation of the number of galaxies in the Universe. The same being that created all of that though only really cares about the one hair from the first trip, which is just 1/190,000,000,000th of one of the hairs in the return trip?
You might not like that, but there you have humanity's 'special' place in the Universe. One out of 190 billion stars in one out of 190 billion galaxies and only existing for six minutes if the history of the universe is an entire year.
Your first quote would make it seem that you are against laws that make people criminals for things that shouldn't be crimes, yet you are saying that the main flaw is that it isn't enforceable. Are you taking the side of the theoretical "oppressive" government?
I doubt it. Wouldn't our large moon is too much of an influence for a stable ring to form? Also the sparser the debris field, the longer the process will take since objects will not make contact that often. I think Most satellites would lose enough energy in a collision of this type to fall back to Earth.
In a civil case, don't they usually subpoena records? They don't come into your house and search for them, you are simply expected to hand them over. Say for instance that they subpoenaed letters I had received over a certain period. I would check my files and turn over any letters that met the criteria, along with a declaration I sign under penalty of perjury that I've turned over all relevant documents. In the RIAA case they get to mirror an entire hard drive and search through all contents. There was indication in the testimony of the 'expert' in the Lindor case that he had gone through emails and documents, he even referenced a resume he found on the hard drive. All they were looking for supposedly was evidence of infringement and use of Kazaa, which they did NOT find.
Computers are used for everything nowadays. Allowing unfettered access to a computer's hard drive would be like allowing them into your home to look around for whatever they want. Nowadays you can watch movies and listen to music on your computer, make phone calls, purchase almost anything on line, reserve movie tickets, and communicate with email and IM. Allowing access to this information if little different than searching a house. You can find what clothes they wear by looking at online purchase history or receipts stored on the computer. You can possibly find their bank records showing ATM withdrawals from a casino for instance or a sex shop. Going through their email is akin to looking over personal letters and birthday cards. Allowing access to a hard drive in my opinion is not narrow enough of a discovery request.
Here's another story that explains it better with figures to back it up. Hollywood actually shipped 30 million more DVDs than in 2006, but they were cheaper as is to be expected of a maturing technology. The general problems in the economy are another reason for the dip. Also half of the $600 million or so drop could be taken away if you count the $300 million in next-gen bluray and HD-DVD movies sold. The $1.7 billion on subscriptions like Netflix is included in the $23.4 bilion total as is the $700 million or so download market I believe. I don't know why they count the $300 million next-gen disc total differently.
Sounds like something Hitler would say...
So they have 'observations' of a 'simulation' of a Bose-Einstein Condensate which 'theoretically' would behave with sound waves similarly to the way a black hole is 'theorized' to behave with regard to particles that pop into existence all the time and it's proof of Hawking radiation? There are just too many theoretical leaps here to give it any weight. If these sound waves were ACTUALLY observed in a real-world experiment and not a simulation then that would be a step closer. Can't they just make a simulation of the event horizon of a black hole?
The problem with those embracing the Bible is that most of them have never read it either. It is an amalgam of different stories that contradict each other. Any serious theologian that has studied the Bible does not believe in the literalness of the text. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence that does the same will immediately see the contradictory and ridiculous nature of it. So we are left with the stories that people can pick points of truth from to suit their own needs. It is much like astrology, people only see the parts that could be true and ignore the rest (talking snakes, dancing swords, Adam would be like God if he had eaten one more piece of fruit, etc.). There is actually no credible evidence for the miracles in the Bible or any prophecies coming true after they were written. Most scholars believe that the book of Isaiah had several authors and minor editors, with a noted change in authorship at chapter 40 (based on his name not being used, the situation changing and style).
I would agree with this to the extent that archeology can back up the movie 'Spiderman' in that I'm pretty sure New York city actually exists. Anything supernatural in the bible is not backed up by archaeological evidence, for instance the great flood.
No, the purpose of the GPL is best explained in its preamble:
If you allow linking of this sort then you allow people to possibly use GPL software under a different license. For instance, Microsoft would take whatever GPL code they wish from Linux, wrap it in a binary interface, and include it in their operating system as long as they released the source code for just those portions. You still couldn't use the GPL code without paying Microsoft for their non-free code. I think it's done a lot of goodIt would be better also because the data (which shows 10.7 years) is for age 75, so if he made it to 77 he would have already crossed a hurdle. He would be 77.5 though and with 85.7 being the life expectancy at age 75, that would give him almost exactly 8 years. Anyway the point is not to try and find the date of his death, which is impossible, but simply to point out that it would be a very real possibility. There's a big difference in health between 65 year olds and 75 year olds.
And Dover, PA is only 50 miles from the coast. Just because California is a bunch of tree-hugging hippy queers doesn't mean that the midwest is all bible-thumping rednecks :)
Who among us would be happy to have Dick Cheney as president?
Actually Ron Paul would have been 73 when he took office in 2009. Ronald Reagan is the current record holder, he was 69 when he took office. In four more years Ron Paul would be 77, as old as Reagan when he left office. I think if you are a white male and have lived to age 75, your life expectancy is about another 11 years. Does that mean Ron Paul would have about a 50% chance of not dieing in office?
I think the wait is mostly due to people with overhead baggage. If you let others board first then other people like me could simply go to our seats, sit down and open a book or magazine. Then let the overheaders in and wait 30 minutes while they block the aisles for each other. Make them exit the plane last also, I think the rest of the plane could empty in about two minutes. If you lined up everyone without overhead baggage by row and sent them all onto the plane it would be boarded in no time flat. You could even line the others up by row and it would take less time since they wouldn't be blocking the fast passengers. To maximize efficiency there should be preferential treatment so that overheaders sat on one side of the plane so the fast people didn't have to move over them to get out. They could still put their baggage on either side so it wouldn't be a weight problem.
That doesn't meet the requirements of Occam's Razor: "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best." "it's probably Sol's fault" isn't a solution in that it doesn't explain climate change that we've been seeing. Take a look at solar output over the last 30 years. Then take a look at temperature graphs. You cannot make the one explain the other, so you have to disregard it as a valid solution. Now look at a graph of carbon dioxide levels and see how well it matches the temperature graph. Using Occam's razor, CO2 levels causing the rise in temperatures is the simplest solution that actually fits with observed data.
Why would you bring up climate change? We've known for many years that the Sun flips its magnetic field every 11 years or so. This is simply the first time we've observed it in another star. The flipping of Sol's magnetic field causes a change in the number and size of sunspots which do affect solar output. This has been taken into account with climate models that show the earth is warming due to human influence. This news story offers absolutely no information pertinent to climate change.
Because we do not know some things does not mean we cannot know others. The fact that the theory of General Relativity does not work at atomic distances does not mean that we can't use it to determine clock skew in different gravity fields. GPS would not work without taking General Relativity into account if you want proof you can hold in your hand. Because we do not know everything about Quantum Mechanics does not mean that we cannot use the theory to create lasers, which are a direct result of quantum mechanical theory. You would not have CD and DVD drives if the theory wasn't mostly correct.
What you are basically saying is that we should throw up our hands and say that whether climate change is occurring due to human influence is unknowable. That sounds nothing like an 'INFORMED decision' as you put it. If you are truly interested, do some research yourself. I questioned man's influence on climate change also until I looked into it. Researchers who study the subject are almost completely of one mind, that humanity is influencing the climate and causing the world to be warmer that it has been in the past. These are people that spend their lives looking at all of the evidence, people that ask the questions you want the answers to and try their best to find them. The people that just throw their hands up and say that it is unknowable are the ones that deny global warming is happening. Some point to one of the warmest years on record being in the 1940s, but that is explainable due to normal cycles. Check out the trends though. Global warming is a FACT, that human influence is causing it is a theory with mountains of evidence supporting it and no evidence against it. The only other thing that people can point to as the cause for global warming is "something we don't know yet".
Their site is amazing! It shows all of the instruments and links to the data they've provided directly. For instance, the DUST instrument measures dust impact events (imagine that). You can use the heliocentric latitude and longitude for these thousands of events to track the spacecraft position throughout it's 17 year journey. A nice readme file explains the structure of the data file. That's just one of the 12 scientific instruments. Very cool stuff...
On another note, why are people saying four times as long as they expected? 17 years is closer to three times the original five years than four. You can't really say it's lasted four times as long as expected until after it has lasted 20 years.
Considering that the need for Dark Energy to explain the expansion of the universe is in question, I don't know. We know very little about Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Now we hear that our own galaxy might be twice as thick as we previously thought. Dark Energy and Dark Matter are added to observed data to come up with models to explain observations. I'm thinking if 75% of the energy in the model is no longer required to explain observations and the 4% of free hydrogen and helium might be doubled that maybe we should take a look at the 25% that is Dark Matter as well.
Mormons knew this already. When they die, they get a world of their very own. The reason they take multiple wives is because they have to populate the entire world by themselves.
So they don't even pretend to understand how it works, but they know it can eventually attain 15% or so efficiency.
This just goes to show that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies will do ANYTHING that they are allowed to do. Give them an inch and they'll take a mile. They will abuse the authority and law enforcement tools given to them until they are finally reigned in. Look how they are using tazers to tame nonviolent drunks. They are basically torturing our own citizens into submitting to 'authority' now. That is unacceptable to me. This is why we shouldn't have a national ID card. This is why the mislabeled 'patriot' act was a bad idea. This is why we shouldn't have a national DNA database. This is why you should not submit to being fingerprinted or having your DNA taken unless they have a warrant. Sure it is only to 'help' their investigation, but the only way it would really help is if they found or planted a match. Cops will search through your trash. They will follow you for days waiting for you to discard a coffee cup so they can get your DNA. Watch Forensic Files or Law and Order. Those shows probably paint a rosy picture compared to the dirty underbelly of real law enforcement.
Is this the same "justice" department that said torture was OK? Is this the same "justice" department that rushed to the hospital to see if the incapacitated attorney general would overrule the acting head's concerns about warrantless wiretapping?
Budget
- Nasa: $17.6 billion / year
- Iraq: $200 billion / year (plus around $500 billion / year for the standard military budget)
Hydrocarbon ReservesImagine getting to Titan though. The first order of business would be prospecting for pockets of Oxygen in the crust to let you create energy from all of those hydrocarbons...