That is, a police officer gives you a lawful order, you obey
Or what, the officer is justified in using any level of force, no matter what the situation is? Tazering someone that's not violent, presents no danger, isn't armed, etc because they're not following orders is a criminal act IMO. Couldn't tell from the video, honestly. She could have reached in a console or under the seat, or behind her for all I could see.
Well it's pretty obvious from the audio that she's distracted by the phone call. The officer never mentioned any kind of weapon, and hostile move by the subject. He seemed intent on telling he he was going to tazer her unless she got off the phone. He then tazered her just like he said he was going to do (in all of 15 seconds).
I also couldn't see from the video if the cop was raping her at the time. Why not start questioning this potentiality or bring up all the other things we couldn't see, but have no evidence for and a lot of evidence against? There's always going to be things you aren't 100% certain of. You have to make a case for them rather than having to prove that they DIDN'T happen. So under what circumstances is the taser itself acceptable when a gun is not?
Probbably when the officer fears that he's going to be injured though not killed in trying to restrain the subject. There's no sign that the officer is in any danger of any injury. It's quite clear that he tazered her only because she wasn't following orders (and not being violent, our of control, on PCP, etc). I think that's horrible and should be a criminal act. After a long chase, from what I understand.
What does the length of the chase have to do with the officers right to use considerable force in subduing a subject? At 21 seconds he threatens to taze her. At 32 seconds, he shoots her.
You really think 11 seconds is enough warning (especially when you're distracted on the phone) for someone to taze you? That's basically just insane from that perspective alone, ignoring the fact that he had no right or reason to taze her in the first place. It was biased to make it look like the police said, "Stop!" and then fired his taser. That's far from the truth.
Except that's basically true. He gave her what, 11 seconds of "I'm going to taze you" warning, and another 20 seconds of "get off the phone" calls. I'd call the above summary largely accurate. Do you have a citation for this? I honestly don't know the rules regarding police tasers, but given their short range, it seems odd that their use would require that a weapon is brandished.
No, but I believe I've read it before in my local newspaper. This isn't a professionally researched article, so that's just going to have to suffice. It's quite sick that cops think they can use the tazer as a persuasion or compliance device on someone that's not violent. What would you have done, out of curiousity?
I'm not trained as a cop, so this question is really irrelevant. It's just fascinating that people seem to think that tazing people in situations like this is the ONLY alternative. As if the tazer has always existed for the past several thousand years, and no cop has had to deal with someone momentarily distracted and not complying to their demands within 15-30 seconds.
I have heard that there's other ways of dealing with non-violent, distracted people that aren't complying with your demands inside 30 seconds though. The question you should be asking is, why was tazing the woman not used as a last resort when there are so many other options available? There you go with that hyperbole again. That's slant and bias, which I'm getting sick of (on here, in the news, etc.)
Interesting. So anything that you disagree with is "slant and bias". That's an awfully nice way to defend your opinions against anything that varies with what you believe. It doesn't even require any kind of argument other than repeating "slant and bias". Frankly it reminds me of what Fox News seems to proclaim.
Why do you want to compare this to the war in Iraq and not to levels of funding for other research?
Because money is fluid, and equal. Why complain that limited science dollars aren't being spent on what you consider important, and look at the real problem that we're not spending enough money on science period?
Also, that 12 billion is spread out among multiple countries, and 10 years, so comparing it to the funding of one year and one country isn't terribly valid.
Even if you compare it to JUST the NSF funding, it's still completely justifiable. We know we need a cheap, clean, extremely plentiful source of energy. Finding it would impact every part of the economy, solve a lot of political problems, etc. There's a LOT of products where one of the major costs is just energy. This ONE project has the potential to change the world on the scale of the industrial revolution, or increasing food resources.
Or we could compare the costs to other projects, like the Hubble space telescope. According to Wikipedia that's cost US taxpayers between 4.5 and 6 billion dollars. It's produced some cool science, but frankly I've never heard anyone talk about any benefits to mankind. Cheap, clean energy has obvious benefits to everyone.
It's risky, and it may never payoff. But relative to the potential benefits, it's cheap.
$12bln is certainly a lot of money for a research project with very uncertain payoff.
12 billion dollars is really nothing, especially spread out among different nations. Consider that the US spent an estimated 135 billion 2006 US dollars to go to the moon. What did we get out of it, some moon rocks and publicity? Sure we got to study the origins of the moon, some technology, etc. But those payoffs were just as uncertain, if not more.
I'm just saying put the costs into perspective. The Iraq war has currently cost the US government 344 billion dollars, and we're not out yet. Are you seriously trying to argue that 12 billion spread out among different countries is "a lot of money"?
It completely sickens and disgusts me that people think that tazing someone 5 times that's immobile on the ground for "not standing up" is somehow justified by the fact that he's a jerk and troublemaker.
He tells her twice more to get out of the car, and says that he will taze her if she does not comply. Once more (3) he tells her to get out of the car. She refuses, he tazes.
What the hell is wrong with you? You seem to think that not immediately following a cops orders is justification for tazing someone. The video I saw was a woman talking a cell phone, not upset or brandishing a weapon, fairly calm, though a bit nervous. The cop on the other hand is escalating the situation. The "get off the phone" "get off the phone" period to actual tazing is about 15 seconds. (and after resisting several lawful orders while being in a car where weapons can be easily hidden, I'm not sure the initial taze was unjustified)
And did she reach for a gun? Any sudden movements? It sounds pretty clear she was on the phone with someone (and probbably distracted by talking on the phone). It's quite obvious the cop decided to taze her because she wasn't following orders, not because he thought she had a weapon, was becoming violent, etc. only this time it's got a liberal slant instead of a commercial one
So police brutality is now a "liberal slant"? Wow. I sure hope not. Of course there's 'ol Rush Limbaugh who thinks that Abu-Graibe was just a bunch of frat-boy initiation hijinks, so maybe not torturing people or not using excessive force is now a "liberal slant". Kind of scary how far you conservatives will go nowadays in trying find "liberal bias".
Knee-jerk reactions are a pretty big problem these days, and it's up to everyone to remain calm and level-headed when examining a situation like this.
If anyone had a knee-jerk reaction here, I'd say it was the cops in both situations. In both incidents the cops thought process was essentially. "Not following orders, repeat orders.. not following orders, taze subject". Funny, I thought the tazer was supposed to be used when the officer was threatened with a weapon, the subject was becoming violent or out of control, not simply when you couldn't get the person to do what you want. If the cops had actually been thinking they wouldn't have needlessly escalated these situations. But no, the cops just pull out their nifty new toy, which some seem to see as a "compliance device" rather than something to be used when their life is threatened.
Either I change video cards more often than CPU's or CPU's more than graphics cards, but in either case I seldom want to upgrade both at the same time.
I'm really guessing that anyone looking for high-performance 3d acceleration isn't going to be the target for this product. Video cards get a lot of high-performance by using insanely fast memory. My guess is this design would use the system memory just like integrated graphics controllers do now.
I'll venture that this GPU/CPU integration is really aimed at the low end market to cheaply increase graphics performance for Vista. The integrated graphics chips that exist now are really just 2d chips, and have little or none of the acceleration that Vista wants for all its eye-candy.
It's also possible that you could use both the Fusion processor and your graphics accelerated card at the same time (though I kind of doubt any game or graphics-subsystem is going to support that).
so why not launch it in the summer, get the fanboys set, then work hard to produce enough of your system to keep in in stock for christmas buyers
You mean launch summer 2007? That's essentially what they'd have to do to have enough units available for a christmas season. I don't think Sony wanted to wait that long as it gave the competition to much of a lead, plus the game makers are probbably chomping at the bit to get the thing released so they can sell games.
Sony was probbably betting on this "limited quantities" release to placate the super-hardcore guys who're drueling to get their hands on it. Those guys might start loosing interest if they made them wait another 7 months. (Or worse, buy a Wii or an XBox360 or both, and MAYBE buy the PS3 much later). They knew there's no way they could crank out enough machines to meet a Christmas demand this year, so they bet on creating "buzz" about the machine this Christmas by releasing enough so there could at least be articles, reviews, etc floating around to at least compete with the Wii and XB0X360 (since they knew they couldn't compete with actual sales).
Part of the reason for their durability is a response to the "metric conversion" orbiter failure and the Mars Polar Lander crash.
How would increasing durability of the rovers protect from a conversion error where the probe crashed into the surface? I guess I find it hard to believe that if NASA has the ability to make something extremely durable for a low cost they wouldn't do it ever time. On a side note, I think they are being too cautious with Opportunity right now. They should send it into the crater *now* rather than search for the best entrance.
From what I understand it's still winter where the rover is on Mars, so power resources are rather limited. It seems a bit foolish to risk anything now when there's few power resources to spend trying to get out of getting "stuck" somewhere. I'd bet most of the wear-and-tear comes from movement, not just sitting around.
Can we say it is due to the usual x10 engineering safety margin?
I don't know. How many other rovers have been deployed in the Martian environment that we can get data back from to determine component lifetimes? I only know of one, and it was a much smaller rover.
I find it pretty amazing that these machines have worked as long as they have. I can't imagine it's an easy job to design a rover to last as long as it has without really being able to test the thing in the environment it's going to be in. Sure you can simulate parts of the environment, but I doubt you can simulate them all at the same time with all the parts working together.
Many people seem to pooh-pooh the survivability of these things because they just assume they were over-engineered. I'm sure they were over-engineered, but the amazing thing is that they were over-engineered in the right way, and pretty cheaply too (820 million to get them to Mars and the first 90 days of operation).
The pattern is: open up and seemingly liberalize communications for a brief period; then, once everyone who criticizes the government identifies themselves, you go clean them up
Hmm.. It's an interesting theory, but it doesn't sound very plausible. If your goal was to find anyone with conflicting views that wants to express them wouldn't you leave the doors open more than a couple days? What would be the purpose to close it down so quickly? Word of Wikipedia being open might not have even spread very widely, or the cautious people would still be avoiding revealing themselves. If it was a trap, I'd think they've sprung it waaay too early.
In any case, I think arguing details of the specific motivations of the American revolution in response to a discussion of the relation of the Chinese situation with general trends it what motivates or produces rebellion is somewhat pointless if it isn't grounded in anything broader than the particular motivation of particular American leaders.
I agree. My only point in bringing up the American revolution was to give an undeniable case where revolution wasn't sparked by hungy, unemployed people. I'm certainly not a historian, so I'm unqualified to discuss revolution in the more general case.
This doesn't mean that it won't cause problems. It may end up killing all life on the planet, or something like that, before it stops.
I find this a rather meaningless statement. You can make a lot of potentially true, but useless statements about something that isn't defined and doesn't actually exist. Since we know nothing about this thing that doesn't exist, we can make almost an infinite amount of meaningless statements about what it MIGHT do. The only limits we can place upon it are the physical bounds of reality. Essentially the less you know about something, the more possibilities of what it MIGHT do there are.
The trick is, don't mistake our ignorance of something for actual knowledge.
Still, there is a bit of a point there: both types of revolts are often driven by the at least moderately well-off who see themselves as positioned to be even more well-off if the revolution succeeds
Hmm.. I sure haven't extensively studied the founding fathers of the US, but it's my understanding that they were quite driven to establish liberty, and not simply driven by greed or a lust for power. If you read what they wrote about (and argued amongst themselves) it becomes quite apparent they weren't just a bunch of greedy bastards looking to make themselves more rich and powerfull.
That's not to say these guys were all perfect and without self interest. Jefferson had frickin slaves. But to simplify the American Revolution down to a few people trying to give themselves more power is simply not true. You only need look at the Bill of Rights to understand they weren't just power-hungry dictators.
Hacking into someone's network uninvited and posting some silly "hacked by" page is not security research.
I missed the part of the article where this is discussed. Can you please point me to it?
The article I read talks about someone who's created exploit code to get around a security measure developed by RedHat. I'm no expert at "ExecShield", but independently developing exploits to security measures sure sounds like Security Research to me.
What you're describing sounds more like script kiddies. It'd be nice if you actually presented some evidence that these guys are actually just script kiddies and not just assuming it because of what I can only assume is personal bias.
Huh. I could have sworn most of the founding fathers in the US were wealthy land owners. I suppose you could argue that they weren't the ones DRIVING the revolution, merely the ones leading it. But I've also never heard about the American revolution being started because the majority of people were hungry or un-employed. From what I've been told it was that people were pissed off that England was imposing draconian controls on trade, freedom of expression, etc.
Plants and some other critters with chlorophyll use it to create carbohydrates out of thin air (think CO2) and water.
Exactly. And have said plants managed to convert the earth into "grey goo" yet? They've had quite a while to get really good at being efficient at using energy and matter to make themselves.
there's a big furnace burning below ground, enough to supply the activation energy for many chemical reactions
Ok, and once all the chemical reactions have taken place that were activated by the higher temperatures, where does the energy come from?
The point is that simply making alarming statements about "grey goo" and runaway reactions without understanding the limiting components is silly. Any organism requires the raw materials required to build it (which atoms do you need), and the energy required to do it. If you need a bunch of iron atoms, sodium atoms, or whatever and you run out, well the replication thing is going to die out.
When policy changes it's because one side has momentarily gained the upper hand, or believed they had, and ordered the change.
I really have no understanding of how policy is set in China, but I might be able to believe that if Wikipedia was accessible for a month or two, but a major blocking policy like this changing over a few days seems a bit insane. Is there really no one in charge over there that makes decisions that last more than a few days? How the hell can you run a country like that?
Since the change from block->no-block->block was all so abrupt I'd say it's more likely that this was just either a technical glitch in the firewall, or a deliberate attempt at trying to perpetuate the belief inside China that there IS no official censorship and it's all just "trouble contacting some sites".
Yes I'm well aware of where the civilizations existed. The Wikipedia article mentions:
The practice of human sacrifice was widespread in Mesoamerican and South American cultures (during the Inca Empire). While the Maya made human sacrifices, the Aztecs practiced it on a particularly large scale, sacrificing human victims on each of their 18 festivities, one festivity for each of their 20-day months
So while the original poster was somewhat wrong in geography, he was largely correct in human sacrifice being performed in by some people of the Americas (which was the relevant point in his justification of European invasion, north or meso-america isn't terrible relevant to the argument).
My point is really that the Europeans weren't really any better at recognizing the value of human life. So I'm not sure how this really justifies any conquering going on.
In order for them to become citizens, Israel would have to annex the territories and everyone would have to accept these territories as completely a part of Israel
Why would that have to be a requirement for citizenship?
In any case, the point I'm trying to make is that comparing the Israel occupation of Palestinian territories is VERY different from the current day US+American Indian situation. I'm not making an argument for Palestinaians becoming or not becoming Israel citizens.
Well, the basic thing about infectious agents is they use the host to replicate. Since these things aren't replicating at all, much less using the host to replicate, they aren't any more like bio-warefare than a gun. What if you were to deploy a vast number of robot hornets who could deliver fatal "stings". How would this be better than a gas attack?
A gas attack is chemical warfare, not biological warfare. How is it better? I'm not sure how to argue that since we're talking about a broad category of weapons that don't actually exist. Thus it's next to impossible to compare them to actual chemical weapons. (Plus I'm not really familiar with the reasons why chemical weapons have been banned).
Released, this nanite could theoretically convert the earth (see "grey goo") into a giant ball of itself.
There's this little problem with replication called "energy", and the laws of thermodynamics. Making order out of disorder requires energy to be expended. Exactly where is all the energy going to come from to turn everything into "grey goo"?
On some level, I agree. The question of course is how much risk, and how do you manage that risk?
I'd hope you wouldn't argue that we totally eliminate the FDA and just let people deal with the risks of the effects of untested drugs. That would be, IMO, insane.
The arguments in the article seem entirely reasonable to me. Small particles behave differently in biological organisms. Before we go full-tilt into deploying new nano-scale materials into food products and anything else people might injest, maybe we should actually test these things and learn more about how they behave in biological organisms.
There exists some molecules that already enter the blood-brain barrier without problems. Therefor all molecules entering the blood-brain barrier have no problems. One could prove anything (including known falsehoods) using that kind of logic.
What I read in the article was that when we create very very fine particles out of substances they behave differently in biological organisms than they do when they aren't in very very small particles. We really have no information on how these very fine particles might behave in biological organisms, so we really should be more cautious in including them in food products, or anything else people might injest since they really haven't been tested yet.
What countries, territories, or tribes do you mean? That practiced human sacrifice in northern South America?
Probbably the Inca, Aztec and Mayans. Read about it here. Though it's not like European culture was any better with it's practice of conquest, religious repression (the inquisition), or conflicts like the Crusades.
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That is, a police officer gives you a lawful order, you obey
Or what, the officer is justified in using any level of force, no matter what the situation is? Tazering someone that's not violent, presents no danger, isn't armed, etc because they're not following orders is a criminal act IMO.
Couldn't tell from the video, honestly. She could have reached in a console or under the seat, or behind her for all I could see.
Well it's pretty obvious from the audio that she's distracted by the phone call. The officer never mentioned any kind of weapon, and hostile move by the subject. He seemed intent on telling he he was going to tazer her unless she got off the phone. He then tazered her just like he said he was going to do (in all of 15 seconds).
I also couldn't see from the video if the cop was raping her at the time. Why not start questioning this potentiality or bring up all the other things we couldn't see, but have no evidence for and a lot of evidence against? There's always going to be things you aren't 100% certain of. You have to make a case for them rather than having to prove that they DIDN'T happen.
So under what circumstances is the taser itself acceptable when a gun is not?
Probbably when the officer fears that he's going to be injured though not killed in trying to restrain the subject. There's no sign that the officer is in any danger of any injury. It's quite clear that he tazered her only because she wasn't following orders (and not being violent, our of control, on PCP, etc). I think that's horrible and should be a criminal act.
After a long chase, from what I understand.
What does the length of the chase have to do with the officers right to use considerable force in subduing a subject?
At 21 seconds he threatens to taze her. At 32 seconds, he shoots her.
You really think 11 seconds is enough warning (especially when you're distracted on the phone) for someone to taze you? That's basically just insane from that perspective alone, ignoring the fact that he had no right or reason to taze her in the first place.
It was biased to make it look like the police said, "Stop!" and then fired his taser. That's far from the truth.
Except that's basically true. He gave her what, 11 seconds of "I'm going to taze you" warning, and another 20 seconds of "get off the phone" calls. I'd call the above summary largely accurate.
Do you have a citation for this? I honestly don't know the rules regarding police tasers, but given their short range, it seems odd that their use would require that a weapon is brandished.
No, but I believe I've read it before in my local newspaper. This isn't a professionally researched article, so that's just going to have to suffice. It's quite sick that cops think they can use the tazer as a persuasion or compliance device on someone that's not violent.
What would you have done, out of curiousity?
I'm not trained as a cop, so this question is really irrelevant. It's just fascinating that people seem to think that tazing people in situations like this is the ONLY alternative. As if the tazer has always existed for the past several thousand years, and no cop has had to deal with someone momentarily distracted and not complying to their demands within 15-30 seconds.
I have heard that there's other ways of dealing with non-violent, distracted people that aren't complying with your demands inside 30 seconds though. The question you should be asking is, why was tazing the woman not used as a last resort when there are so many other options available?
There you go with that hyperbole again. That's slant and bias, which I'm getting sick of (on here, in the news, etc.)
Interesting. So anything that you disagree with is "slant and bias". That's an awfully nice way to defend your opinions against anything that varies with what you believe. It doesn't even require any kind of argument other than repeating "slant and bias". Frankly it reminds me of what Fox News seems to proclaim.
Why do you want to compare this to the war in Iraq and not to levels of funding for other research?
Because money is fluid, and equal. Why complain that limited science dollars aren't being spent on what you consider important, and look at the real problem that we're not spending enough money on science period?
Also, that 12 billion is spread out among multiple countries, and 10 years, so comparing it to the funding of one year and one country isn't terribly valid.
Even if you compare it to JUST the NSF funding, it's still completely justifiable. We know we need a cheap, clean, extremely plentiful source of energy. Finding it would impact every part of the economy, solve a lot of political problems, etc. There's a LOT of products where one of the major costs is just energy. This ONE project has the potential to change the world on the scale of the industrial revolution, or increasing food resources.
Or we could compare the costs to other projects, like the Hubble space telescope. According to Wikipedia that's cost US taxpayers between 4.5 and 6 billion dollars. It's produced some cool science, but frankly I've never heard anyone talk about any benefits to mankind. Cheap, clean energy has obvious benefits to everyone.
It's risky, and it may never payoff. But relative to the potential benefits, it's cheap.
$12bln is certainly a lot of money for a research project with very uncertain payoff.
12 billion dollars is really nothing, especially spread out among different nations. Consider that the US spent an estimated 135 billion 2006 US dollars to go to the moon. What did we get out of it, some moon rocks and publicity? Sure we got to study the origins of the moon, some technology, etc. But those payoffs were just as uncertain, if not more.
I'm just saying put the costs into perspective. The Iraq war has currently cost the US government 344 billion dollars, and we're not out yet. Are you seriously trying to argue that 12 billion spread out among different countries is "a lot of money"?
It completely sickens and disgusts me that people think that tazing someone 5 times that's immobile on the ground for "not standing up" is somehow justified by the fact that he's a jerk and troublemaker.
He tells her twice more to get out of the car, and says that he will taze her if she does not comply. Once more (3) he tells her to get out of the car. She refuses, he tazes.
What the hell is wrong with you? You seem to think that not immediately following a cops orders is justification for tazing someone. The video I saw was a woman talking a cell phone, not upset or brandishing a weapon, fairly calm, though a bit nervous. The cop on the other hand is escalating the situation. The "get off the phone" "get off the phone" period to actual tazing is about 15 seconds.
(and after resisting several lawful orders while being in a car where weapons can be easily hidden, I'm not sure the initial taze was unjustified)
And did she reach for a gun? Any sudden movements? It sounds pretty clear she was on the phone with someone (and probbably distracted by talking on the phone). It's quite obvious the cop decided to taze her because she wasn't following orders, not because he thought she had a weapon, was becoming violent, etc.
only this time it's got a liberal slant instead of a commercial one
So police brutality is now a "liberal slant"? Wow. I sure hope not. Of course there's 'ol Rush Limbaugh who thinks that Abu-Graibe was just a bunch of frat-boy initiation hijinks, so maybe not torturing people or not using excessive force is now a "liberal slant". Kind of scary how far you conservatives will go nowadays in trying find "liberal bias".
Knee-jerk reactions are a pretty big problem these days, and it's up to everyone to remain calm and level-headed when examining a situation like this.
If anyone had a knee-jerk reaction here, I'd say it was the cops in both situations. In both incidents the cops thought process was essentially. "Not following orders, repeat orders.. not following orders, taze subject". Funny, I thought the tazer was supposed to be used when the officer was threatened with a weapon, the subject was becoming violent or out of control, not simply when you couldn't get the person to do what you want. If the cops had actually been thinking they wouldn't have needlessly escalated these situations. But no, the cops just pull out their nifty new toy, which some seem to see as a "compliance device" rather than something to be used when their life is threatened.
Either I change video cards more often than CPU's or CPU's more than graphics cards, but in either case I seldom want to upgrade both at the same time.
I'm really guessing that anyone looking for high-performance 3d acceleration isn't going to be the target for this product. Video cards get a lot of high-performance by using insanely fast memory. My guess is this design would use the system memory just like integrated graphics controllers do now.
I'll venture that this GPU/CPU integration is really aimed at the low end market to cheaply increase graphics performance for Vista. The integrated graphics chips that exist now are really just 2d chips, and have little or none of the acceleration that Vista wants for all its eye-candy.
It's also possible that you could use both the Fusion processor and your graphics accelerated card at the same time (though I kind of doubt any game or graphics-subsystem is going to support that).
so why not launch it in the summer, get the fanboys set, then work hard to produce enough of your system to keep in in stock for christmas buyers
You mean launch summer 2007? That's essentially what they'd have to do to have enough units available for a christmas season. I don't think Sony wanted to wait that long as it gave the competition to much of a lead, plus the game makers are probbably chomping at the bit to get the thing released so they can sell games.
Sony was probbably betting on this "limited quantities" release to placate the super-hardcore guys who're drueling to get their hands on it. Those guys might start loosing interest if they made them wait another 7 months. (Or worse, buy a Wii or an XBox360 or both, and MAYBE buy the PS3 much later). They knew there's no way they could crank out enough machines to meet a Christmas demand this year, so they bet on creating "buzz" about the machine this Christmas by releasing enough so there could at least be articles, reviews, etc floating around to at least compete with the Wii and XB0X360 (since they knew they couldn't compete with actual sales).
Part of the reason for their durability is a response to the "metric conversion" orbiter failure and the Mars Polar Lander crash.
How would increasing durability of the rovers protect from a conversion error where the probe crashed into the surface? I guess I find it hard to believe that if NASA has the ability to make something extremely durable for a low cost they wouldn't do it ever time.
On a side note, I think they are being too cautious with Opportunity right now. They should send it into the crater *now* rather than search for the best entrance.
From what I understand it's still winter where the rover is on Mars, so power resources are rather limited. It seems a bit foolish to risk anything now when there's few power resources to spend trying to get out of getting "stuck" somewhere. I'd bet most of the wear-and-tear comes from movement, not just sitting around.
Can we say it is due to the usual x10 engineering safety margin?
I don't know. How many other rovers have been deployed in the Martian environment that we can get data back from to determine component lifetimes? I only know of one, and it was a much smaller rover.
I find it pretty amazing that these machines have worked as long as they have. I can't imagine it's an easy job to design a rover to last as long as it has without really being able to test the thing in the environment it's going to be in. Sure you can simulate parts of the environment, but I doubt you can simulate them all at the same time with all the parts working together.
Many people seem to pooh-pooh the survivability of these things because they just assume they were over-engineered. I'm sure they were over-engineered, but the amazing thing is that they were over-engineered in the right way, and pretty cheaply too (820 million to get them to Mars and the first 90 days of operation).
The pattern is: open up and seemingly liberalize communications for a brief period; then, once everyone who criticizes the government identifies themselves, you go clean them up
Hmm.. It's an interesting theory, but it doesn't sound very plausible. If your goal was to find anyone with conflicting views that wants to express them wouldn't you leave the doors open more than a couple days? What would be the purpose to close it down so quickly? Word of Wikipedia being open might not have even spread very widely, or the cautious people would still be avoiding revealing themselves. If it was a trap, I'd think they've sprung it waaay too early.
In any case, I think arguing details of the specific motivations of the American revolution in response to a discussion of the relation of the Chinese situation with general trends it what motivates or produces rebellion is somewhat pointless if it isn't grounded in anything broader than the particular motivation of particular American leaders.
I agree. My only point in bringing up the American revolution was to give an undeniable case where revolution wasn't sparked by hungy, unemployed people. I'm certainly not a historian, so I'm unqualified to discuss revolution in the more general case.
The founding fathers were activists. As was Any of many people that caused changes.
Funny, I don't recall any of them referring to themselves as activists, or mentioning that word in writing. Thus no revolver-reaching-for.
This doesn't mean that it won't cause problems. It may end up killing all life on the planet, or something like that, before it stops.
I find this a rather meaningless statement. You can make a lot of potentially true, but useless statements about something that isn't defined and doesn't actually exist. Since we know nothing about this thing that doesn't exist, we can make almost an infinite amount of meaningless statements about what it MIGHT do. The only limits we can place upon it are the physical bounds of reality. Essentially the less you know about something, the more possibilities of what it MIGHT do there are.
The trick is, don't mistake our ignorance of something for actual knowledge.
Still, there is a bit of a point there: both types of revolts are often driven by the at least moderately well-off who see themselves as positioned to be even more well-off if the revolution succeeds
Hmm.. I sure haven't extensively studied the founding fathers of the US, but it's my understanding that they were quite driven to establish liberty, and not simply driven by greed or a lust for power. If you read what they wrote about (and argued amongst themselves) it becomes quite apparent they weren't just a bunch of greedy bastards looking to make themselves more rich and powerfull.
That's not to say these guys were all perfect and without self interest. Jefferson had frickin slaves. But to simplify the American Revolution down to a few people trying to give themselves more power is simply not true. You only need look at the Bill of Rights to understand they weren't just power-hungry dictators.
Hacking into someone's network uninvited and posting some silly "hacked by" page is not security research.
I missed the part of the article where this is discussed. Can you please point me to it?
The article I read talks about someone who's created exploit code to get around a security measure developed by RedHat. I'm no expert at "ExecShield", but independently developing exploits to security measures sure sounds like Security Research to me.
What you're describing sounds more like script kiddies. It'd be nice if you actually presented some evidence that these guys are actually just script kiddies and not just assuming it because of what I can only assume is personal bias.
Rich, well-fed people do not drive revolutions.
Huh. I could have sworn most of the founding fathers in the US were wealthy land owners. I suppose you could argue that they weren't the ones DRIVING the revolution, merely the ones leading it. But I've also never heard about the American revolution being started because the majority of people were hungry or un-employed. From what I've been told it was that people were pissed off that England was imposing draconian controls on trade, freedom of expression, etc.
Plants and some other critters with chlorophyll use it to create carbohydrates out of thin air (think CO2) and water.
Exactly. And have said plants managed to convert the earth into "grey goo" yet? They've had quite a while to get really good at being efficient at using energy and matter to make themselves.
there's a big furnace burning below ground, enough to supply the activation energy for many chemical reactions
Ok, and once all the chemical reactions have taken place that were activated by the higher temperatures, where does the energy come from?
The point is that simply making alarming statements about "grey goo" and runaway reactions without understanding the limiting components is silly. Any organism requires the raw materials required to build it (which atoms do you need), and the energy required to do it. If you need a bunch of iron atoms, sodium atoms, or whatever and you run out, well the replication thing is going to die out.
When policy changes it's because one side has momentarily gained the upper hand, or believed they had, and ordered the change.
I really have no understanding of how policy is set in China, but I might be able to believe that if Wikipedia was accessible for a month or two, but a major blocking policy like this changing over a few days seems a bit insane. Is there really no one in charge over there that makes decisions that last more than a few days? How the hell can you run a country like that?
Since the change from block->no-block->block was all so abrupt I'd say it's more likely that this was just either a technical glitch in the firewall, or a deliberate attempt at trying to perpetuate the belief inside China that there IS no official censorship and it's all just "trouble contacting some sites".
So while the original poster was somewhat wrong in geography, he was largely correct in human sacrifice being performed in by some people of the Americas (which was the relevant point in his justification of European invasion, north or meso-america isn't terrible relevant to the argument).
My point is really that the Europeans weren't really any better at recognizing the value of human life. So I'm not sure how this really justifies any conquering going on.
In order for them to become citizens, Israel would have to annex the territories and everyone would have to accept these territories as completely a part of Israel
Why would that have to be a requirement for citizenship?
In any case, the point I'm trying to make is that comparing the Israel occupation of Palestinian territories is VERY different from the current day US+American Indian situation. I'm not making an argument for Palestinaians becoming or not becoming Israel citizens.
Well, the basic thing about infectious agents is they use the host to replicate. Since these things aren't replicating at all, much less using the host to replicate, they aren't any more like bio-warefare than a gun.
What if you were to deploy a vast number of robot hornets who could deliver fatal "stings". How would this be better than a gas attack?
A gas attack is chemical warfare, not biological warfare. How is it better? I'm not sure how to argue that since we're talking about a broad category of weapons that don't actually exist. Thus it's next to impossible to compare them to actual chemical weapons. (Plus I'm not really familiar with the reasons why chemical weapons have been banned).
Released, this nanite could theoretically convert the earth (see "grey goo") into a giant ball of itself.
There's this little problem with replication called "energy", and the laws of thermodynamics. Making order out of disorder requires energy to be expended. Exactly where is all the energy going to come from to turn everything into "grey goo"?
Progress requires risk. Deal.
On some level, I agree. The question of course is how much risk, and how do you manage that risk?
I'd hope you wouldn't argue that we totally eliminate the FDA and just let people deal with the risks of the effects of untested drugs. That would be, IMO, insane.
The arguments in the article seem entirely reasonable to me. Small particles behave differently in biological organisms. Before we go full-tilt into deploying new nano-scale materials into food products and anything else people might injest, maybe we should actually test these things and learn more about how they behave in biological organisms.
So essentially your argument is:
There exists some molecules that already enter the blood-brain barrier without problems. Therefor all molecules entering the blood-brain barrier have no problems. One could prove anything (including known falsehoods) using that kind of logic.
What I read in the article was that when we create very very fine particles out of substances they behave differently in biological organisms than they do when they aren't in very very small particles. We really have no information on how these very fine particles might behave in biological organisms, so we really should be more cautious in including them in food products, or anything else people might injest since they really haven't been tested yet.
What countries, territories, or tribes do you mean? That practiced human sacrifice in northern South America?
Probbably the Inca, Aztec and Mayans. Read about it here. Though it's not like European culture was any better with it's practice of conquest, religious repression (the inquisition), or conflicts like the Crusades.