Speaking of Slashvertisements, I'm running Linux on a Dell 11" 3147
two-in-one. I can use it as a small laptop machine and I can also
use it for watching Netflix in the tablet configuration. Although
the two-in-one is thicker and heavier than a tablet, it can be
better than a tablet for watching videos because there are several
configurations where the keyboard acts like a stand so you don't
have to constantly hold it.
For me, it was $260 well spent (via the Dell outlet store). I'm
pleased with the device even though the Linux support is merely
adequate. No multi-touch for the touchscreen and I can't access the
accelerometer. AFAIK, everything else works. I wrote little
scripts to rotate the display and disable the keyboard and touchpad.
I get over 5 hours of battery life while mostly watching videos. I
like that the Linux desktop and/or virtual consoles are only a click
or two away because I like to tinker. There are a bunch of hardware
improvements that would be nice, starting with a lighted keyboard,
but for the price, I'm not complaining.
IMO, if the price is decent you might as well buy a laptop with a
touchscreen that folds all the way back. I think it is a good use
of resources and it makes the device much more versatile. For me
personally it is better than a separate tablet and laptop. I may
never buy another laptop that doesn't convert to tablet mode.
This decision was weakened by the Court's ruling in Braden v.
30th Judicial Circuit Court (1973), when the court found that the
key to jurisdiction was whether the Court could process service
to the custodians. Braden was relied on by the Court in Rasul v.
Bush (2004), in which it held that it did have jurisdiction over
the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay detention camp because it
could reach their custodians, the policymakers and leaders of the
Bush administration, who were responsible for their detention.
The abstract of the article you linked to ends with:
This result suggests that public divisions over climate change
stem not from the public's incomprehension of science but from a
distinctive conflict of interest: between the personal interest
individuals have in forming beliefs in line with those held by
others with whom they share close ties and the collective one
they all share in making use of the best available science to
promote common welfare.
FFS, how you can you interpret that in any other way than the
failure of science education? The paper says the failure
is not because people know too little science but because
they don't believe in science because they are surrounded by
people who don't believe in science.
How on earth can you interpret the abstract of that paper to be a
vindication of science education and a justification of your
disparaging comments about Bill Nye? If nearly half the
population disbelieves in science and doesn't use science to form
opinions on matters of vital importance and public welfare then
how is that not a failure of science education?
Did you even bother to read all of the abstract?
To make a car analogy, it's like you are saying an advertising
campaign for car was a rip roaring success because it created
a lot of brand recognition. But sales were dismal because even
though many people knew the brand, they had very negative
associations with it.
Can be sure as shit that Kim isn't going to part with his money
to defend him even if he didn't have his own case to worry about.
You are correct but not for the selfish reason you imply. Kim
Dotcom's assets have been frozen so they were not available to
defend this programmer. He is only being allowed money for
living expenses and his own legal fees. You may hate Kim Dotcom
but he is not stupid. It would have been in his own best
interests to pay for this guy's defense (assuming that fact
couldn't be use to malign the defendant).
to assign to @lines, when not raising lines is a sign your not
just another Perl hacker. @names would be the better choice,
@sorted_names is another.
The Perl code is sorting hashes based on the value associated
with the "Name" key in each hash. Presumably the other data
in the hashes are what make a "Line" and the Name is just one
of possibly many attributes. Therefore you suggestions don't
make much sense to me. Perhaps you were thinking of
the much simpler:
I reached my (1st) goal of getting into the 14's in the quarter
mile, last year. I feel that any car running in the 14 seconds
is faster than most cars on the road, but this speed stuff is
like a drug. You always think of some little thing to make it a
little faster. If a 14 second mini van will beat most of the
cars on the road, a 12 second Mini Van mini van will beat almost
all the cars on the road!
Asking people to be less provocative is not the same as condoning
a violent response to the provocation. A violent response can
be expected without being acceptable.
[...] there should be no problem with prioritized packets as long
as you are not slowed down or interfered with in order to
deliver them.
I did read your sentence to completion and I still vehemently
disagree with it. At first I thought you were suggesting there
be a fast lane as long as there is not a slow lane but, of
course, that makes no sense. Then I figured out you are fine
with a fast line paid by the sender as long as the slow lane
meets some minimum bandwidth requirements. How can the customer
complain since they are getting the extra fast line bandwidth
"for free"?
One of the many obvious problems with this scheme is that it can
quickly devolve to a situation that squeezes out all of the mom
and pop content providers (the general public) who can't afford
to pay for the fast lane. It reminds me a little of those
idiotic "deals" from ISPs that let you lock in your current
bandwidth and payment rate for life. As technology improves,
increases in bandwidth should far exceed increases in costs.
I admit that in a static situation where my bandwidth to and from
certain corporations suddenly increases is not, in and of itself,
a bad thing. This seems to be the situation you envision. The
problems start when the original static situation evolves over
time. You can easily get into a situation where bandwidth to and
from certain corporation is basically free while all other
bandwidth is exorbitantly expensive. In the US, at least, the
last mile is already a big corporate, unregulated rip-off. Why
open the door to make it much much worse? The only way it could
possibly be feasible would be for massive regulation of the
minimum bandwidth and maximum fees of the slow lane. If the
fast lane (and especially the slow lane) are unregulated then it
will become a consumer nightmare. If you regulate it enough to
work so consumers are not "slowed down or interfered with" going
forward into the future then it will be a nightmare for everyone
and the fast lane will be worth little.
I am also reminded of the RICO laws and things like civil
forfeiture where the government can basically steal stuff from
you without ever even charging you with a crime. Those bad
laws were passed under the guise of "we are only going to use
them on the really bad guys". Perhaps those were the intentions
when those laws were passed but a few years down the road some
police department reads the law carefully and figures out it can
be used as a great way to raise sorely needed funding for the
department. And, guess what? It is also legal. A rough rule of
thumb is that any law that can be abused will be abused
eventually. Why needlessly open up another channel for abuse
when we gain nothing by doing so?
If you are a poor person on a sinking ship would you like a
policy where the rich people get the fancy lifeboats and the
poor people get lifeboats that were deemed adequate many years
ago? Or would you prefer a policy where the poor and the rich
are all put into the same lifeboats?
why can't the electrons get between two nuclei and cancel their
repulsion (rather like muons can do)?
The problem is that the conduction electrons are spread out so
they can't clump together in the space between the nuclei. This
is due to the low mass of the electron. A muon is very much like
an electron but is over 3,000 times more massive; this means it
is 3,000 times "smaller" and thus can fit into the small space
between the nuclei just fine.
The problem is not that the electron wave function can't get
close to the nuclei. The problem is that the electron wave
function can't get clumped together into a large enough peak to
counteract the Coulomb repulsion of the nuclei. One way to see
this is with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Since a muon
is 3,000 times more massive than an electron, it has 3,000 times
more momentum for the same motion. This extra momentum allows
it to be more localized without violating Heisenberg.
One of the best physicist of the 20th century, Julian Schwinger,
investigated cold fusion and felt that the physics community as
a whole was closed minded about it. I *think* his idea was there
was some sort of collective phenomenon (getting the palladium
just right) that accounts for cold fusion. It can't be as
simple as simple screening by conduction electrons. TBH, I think
Schwinger was past his prime and was grasping for things he could
apply his formidable intellect to that would be useful for
humanity.
I believe the reason most physicists have a problem with cold
fusion is the lack compelling experimental evidence combined with
the lack of any satisfactory theoretical explanation. Remember
that almost all of the interest in cold fusion was sparked by
the totally discredit experiments by Pons and Fleischmann. The
experiments could not be replicated and in new experiments there
was no indication of nuclear activity.
There's no reason to think this [cold fusion] couldn't happen
with palladium foil given sufficient resources.
There is at least one overwhelming reason to think this could
not happen regardless of how you prepare the palladium: basic
physics.
The Coulomb repulsion of the deuterons keeps them so far apart
that the likelihood of fusion is exponentially small. You can
muck about with the palladium until the cows come home but unless
do something like replace the electrons with muons, it is
unlikely you are going to induce a significant amount of cold fusion.
It is like saying that by applying sufficient resources to painting
and body-work, I can fix the engine of my car.
merely requiring generic computer implementation fails to
transform [an] abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention.
Recently, after its SCO fiasco, Microsoft's biggest gun in its
ceaseless war on Linux and all things FOSS has been patent
extortion. IIRC, Microsoft makes a sizable chuck of change from
Android devices due to the licenses for a fuzzy bunch of patents
that have never been tested for validity in a court of law.
At some point, someone with deep enough pockets to risk a spin on
the roulette wheel that is the US court system in regard to
patents will take on Microsoft and see if the Emperor is wearing
clothes or not. Microsoft owns some very smart lawyers. The
lawyers know such a challenge is inevitable. They also know
there is a good chance Microsoft will lose and will have to shut
down its patent extortion racket. At that point they will need a
plan B. This is their baby steps towards a plan B which is way
too little, way too late.
I haven't canceled hundreds of orders on Amazon but I have
canceled a handful. There has never been a fee or a penalty
although I did have to fill in a small form explaining why I
canceled.
If you did this maliciously with a bunch of items just to be a
PITA then they would probably respond accordingly and cancel your
account.
OTOH, I have had a seller raise the price of an item after I
made an inquiry about it. That really pissed me off. I
complained to Amazon but they said it was within their rules.
The end result is it is stupid to make polite inquires about
products (for example, asking if a used book listed as hardcover
really is hardcover). You are better off just placing the
order and then returning the item for a full refund if it does
not match the description.
But instead of negotiating or even trying to compromise they
[Google] just took their ball and left.
WTF? What was there to negotiate or compromise on? Paying the
extortionists any non-zero amount would have been the worst
business decision ever made by Google. While there were extreme
options available to Google, such as law suits and massive
lobbying, Google took a rather mild approach by obeying the silly
law while refusing to pay the extortion which meant they simply shut
down their services that would have been encumbered by the
extortion racket.
Even if the complete lunacy of the extortion racket was not clear
to you previously, this idiotic press release should have made it
crystal clear. The Spanish news media need Google more than
Google needs them. Therefore it was idiotic for the Spanish
news media to try to get Google to pay them for providing them
with a service they greatly desire.
When you are freely providing someone a service they greatly desire
and then they want to charge *you* for providing them with this
service, there is very little room for compromise or negotiation.
For example, if I owned a country and passed a law that Slashdot
has to pay me for every comment I post, their only logical
response would be to stop allowing me to post comments. I could
bitch and moan about them being big babies about it but until
my position has some relationship to reality, there is really
nothing to negotiate or compromise on.
buttons are expensive and can't be reconfigured on the fly.
If true, this sounds like the most important reason why buttons
are better than touch-screens in dashboards. Don't you hate it when
you try to raise the volume and accidentally activate the passenger
seat ejector instead?
Except that in this case the law was very plain and it was obvious
that it was being violated. I may not like the DMCA, but it doesn't
take a legal brainiac to know that refusing to comply with take-down
requests (what Kim's was doing with his links vs files argument)
will lead to greater legal retaliation.
What are you talking about? KDC followed the advice of his
lawyers and complied with DMCA takedown notices. He was
set up in a nasty sting operation where the FBI asked him
to not take down a particular file (or files) in order to
aid them in an investigation. He cooperated with the FBI
and this is what they busted him for.
For example, the Wikipedia gives Dotcom's perspective:
In regard to Megaupload, Dotcom believes the company had actively
tried to prevent copyright infringement -- its terms of service
forced users to agree they would not post copyrighted material to
the website. Companies or individuals with concerns that their
copyright material was being posted on Megaupload were given direct
access to the website to delete infringing links. Megaupload also
employed 20 staff dedicated to taking down material which might
infringe copyright.
KDC was hosting files so it would be silly for him to use a "links
vs files" argument as you suggest. It would have also been
extremely stupid for him to ignore DMCA takedown notices because
obeying those notices is what gave him "safe harbor" protection.
You may be a legal brainiac but what you are suggesting makes no
sense and has nothing to do with reality.
What? Yes, you absolutely can. Yes, it was absolutely predictable.
Yes. YES! Look, yes. The answer to all your objecting questions is
yes. Yes, he could and should have predicted that the USA would do
its best to sow his ground with salt. Just fucking look at us. LOOK
AT US. Of course we would do that.
Even if you can predict that no rules/laws will apply, how can
you reasonably plan for that contingency? What would those
plans look like? Should KDC have given up business and become
a survivalist?
My wholehearted prediction would have been that KDC was on the
entitled side of the justice gap and as long as he had good lawyers
and followed their advice then he would have nothing to worry about.
The Pirate Bay getting repeatedly stomped on was not a surprise but
the attack on KDC was a huge shock to me. I still find it amazing.
Why don't other countries have a net neutrality problem? Because
they have competition among their ISPs. If an ISP tries to
deliberately slow down a popular website to extort the site for
extra payments, it doesn't put pressure on the website to pay.
Instead it puts pressure on the ISP's customers to switch to another
ISP. In most of the rest of the world, any ISP trying to pull this
stunt puts itself out of business.
It only works in the U.S. because these ISPs have government-granted
monopolies over the local customer base. The customer can't flee to
a different ISP because there is none - the local government has
made it illegal for there to be a competitor. Essentially, net
neutrality is more government regulation to solve a problem caused
by government regulation.
Here's how US regulators do a broadband plan: talk about competition
even while admitting there isn't enough, then tinker around the
edges with running fiber to "anchor institutions" and start
collecting real data on US broadband use.
Here's how they do it in the UK: order incumbent telco BT to share
its fiber lines with any ISP who is willing to pay. In places where
BT hasn't yet run fiber, order the company to share its ducts and
poles with anyone who wants to run said fiber. In the 14 percent of
the UK without meaningful broadband competition, slap price controls
on Internet access to keep people from getting gouged. [...]
"Aside from small urban countries with highly concentrated
populations, like Singapore, the main countries which are currently
leading in the rollout and take-up of super-fast broadband are those
which have had significant government intervention to support
deployment, such as Japan and South Korea."
I've Googled around and I can't find any evidence that backs up your
implication that consumers benefit from less government regulation
of ISPs. Everything I've seen says the benefits in non-US
countries stem from greater government intervention.
The nuanced Republican stance you refer to seems to be a
code-phrase for BS. IMO the core of the problem is there is
a lot of BS flying around because our corporate controlled "fair
and balanced" media (including the NYT) refuse to call out
politicians on outright lies. This gives a decided advantage
to those who lie more. With no checks and balances from the
media, public debate is mired in giant echo chambers filled with
BS.
Thanks. I seem to be the one with an outdated mindset. I didn't
know about that rule of thumb. Back when I went to school, I got by
with a little help from my parents but mostly with a scholarship,
loans, and a nearly full-time job. But tuition at an Ivy League
school was only $5K/year and my starting salary after I got out was
around $20K so even getting loans for the entire tuition would have
matched your rule.
I'm glad you were able to buck the trend and find a way to pay for
college that did not leave you in a financial hole you could not
escape from. I still think this is not possible for the majority
of students today. Sure, anyone may have been able to get the
situation you found but there are not enough situations like that
to go around for everyone. Having a system that puts so many
college graduates into an inescapable financial black hole is
very damaging to our society. It is like eating our seed corn.
When I went to school, situations like yours were open to almost
everyone, even people going to Ivy League Universities.
Perhaps your mindset on this is a little outdated. I know mine
was and that is the heart of the problem. For many decades
student loans made sense. They were a terrific investment
because the increase in your earning potential from going
to college was fantastic. It paid for the loans many times
over.
Unfortunately, both sides of the equation have changed drastically
which has really screwed over the majority (I am guessing) of college
students. On one hand, the cost of college has gone through the roof,
vastly outpacing inflation and on the other hand, the ROI for going to
college has tanked.
Taking out loans to go to college used to be the best investment you
could make. Now you are likely to get screwed over. My editorial
take on this is that it is a perfect example of capitalism run
rampant. At various stages in the system, people have found ways to
take advantage of (i.e. monetize) the general perception that taking
out loans to go to college was a great investment. They did this by
turning it into a lousy investment. It is no different from
fleecing neophytes in the stock market.
Education used to be the cornerstone of the American Dream. Turning
it into a terrible investment is extremely toxic to our society.
This is related to another result of extreme capitalism:
No matter how small and cheap and crappy something is,
someone will figure out a way to make the same thing
smaller and cheaper and crappier.
All they've done in systemd is write C code to start up services
that used to be started instead by shell scripts and added the
ability to make dependency resolution automatic so that services are
only started when they need to be.
If that had been all then there would not be this huge controversy.
You are describing a very stripped down version of uselessd which
is already a stripped down version of systemd. You are ignoring
98% of what is most objectionable about systemd by reducing it to
the least controversial component.
ISTM such vast oversimplifications add fuel to the fire and further
polarize the debate.
There are two types of forfeiture cases, criminal and civil.
Approximately half of all forfeiture cases practiced today are
civil, although many of those are filed in parallel to a related
criminal case. In civil forfeiture cases, the US Government sues
the item of property, not the person; the owner is effectively a
third-party claimant. [...]
In civil cases, the owner need not be judged guilty of any crime;
[...]
In contrast, criminal forfeiture is usually carried out in a
sentence following a conviction and is a punitive act against the
offender.
I don't want to put words in your mouth but I think the type of
forfeiture you so strenuously (and correctly) object to is called
civil asset forfeiture or civil forfeiture for short.
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking of Slashvertisements, I'm running Linux on a Dell 11" 3147 two-in-one. I can use it as a small laptop machine and I can also use it for watching Netflix in the tablet configuration. Although the two-in-one is thicker and heavier than a tablet, it can be better than a tablet for watching videos because there are several configurations where the keyboard acts like a stand so you don't have to constantly hold it.
For me, it was $260 well spent (via the Dell outlet store). I'm pleased with the device even though the Linux support is merely adequate. No multi-touch for the touchscreen and I can't access the accelerometer. AFAIK, everything else works. I wrote little scripts to rotate the display and disable the keyboard and touchpad. I get over 5 hours of battery life while mostly watching videos. I like that the Linux desktop and/or virtual consoles are only a click or two away because I like to tinker. There are a bunch of hardware improvements that would be nice, starting with a lighted keyboard, but for the price, I'm not complaining.
IMO, if the price is decent you might as well buy a laptop with a touchscreen that folds all the way back. I think it is a good use of resources and it makes the device much more versatile. For me personally it is better than a separate tablet and laptop. I may never buy another laptop that doesn't convert to tablet mode.
The Wikipedia article you linked to supports what the GP said:
This decision was weakened by the Court's ruling in Braden v. 30th Judicial Circuit Court (1973), when the court found that the key to jurisdiction was whether the Court could process service to the custodians. Braden was relied on by the Court in Rasul v. Bush (2004), in which it held that it did have jurisdiction over the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay detention camp because it could reach their custodians, the policymakers and leaders of the Bush administration, who were responsible for their detention.
The abstract of the article you linked to ends with:
This result suggests that public divisions over climate change stem not from the public's incomprehension of science but from a distinctive conflict of interest: between the personal interest individuals have in forming beliefs in line with those held by others with whom they share close ties and the collective one they all share in making use of the best available science to promote common welfare.
FFS, how you can you interpret that in any other way than the failure of science education? The paper says the failure is not because people know too little science but because they don't believe in science because they are surrounded by people who don't believe in science.
How on earth can you interpret the abstract of that paper to be a vindication of science education and a justification of your disparaging comments about Bill Nye? If nearly half the population disbelieves in science and doesn't use science to form opinions on matters of vital importance and public welfare then how is that not a failure of science education? Did you even bother to read all of the abstract?
To make a car analogy, it's like you are saying an advertising campaign for car was a rip roaring success because it created a lot of brand recognition. But sales were dismal because even though many people knew the brand, they had very negative associations with it.
Can be sure as shit that Kim isn't going to part with his money to defend him even if he didn't have his own case to worry about.
You are correct but not for the selfish reason you imply. Kim Dotcom's assets have been frozen so they were not available to defend this programmer. He is only being allowed money for living expenses and his own legal fees. You may hate Kim Dotcom but he is not stupid. It would have been in his own best interests to pay for this guy's defense (assuming that fact couldn't be use to malign the defendant).
RIP SPARC.
@Lines = sort { $a->{Name} cmp $b->{Name} } @Lines;
to assign to @lines, when not raising lines is a sign your not just another Perl hacker.
@names would be the better choice, @sorted_names is another.
The Perl code is sorting hashes based on the value associated with the "Name" key in each hash. Presumably the other data in the hashes are what make a "Line" and the Name is just one of possibly many attributes. Therefore you suggestions don't make much sense to me. Perhaps you were thinking of the much simpler:
@Names = sort @Names;
link
I reached my (1st) goal of getting into the 14's in the quarter mile, last year. I feel that any car running in the 14 seconds is faster than most cars on the road, but this speed stuff is like a drug. You always think of some little thing to make it a little faster. If a 14 second mini van will beat most of the cars on the road, a 12 second Mini Van mini van will beat almost all the cars on the road!
Religion 101:
Asking people to be less provocative is not the same as condoning a violent response to the provocation. A violent response can be expected without being acceptable.
[...] there should be no problem with prioritized packets as long as you are not slowed down or interfered with in order to deliver them.
I did read your sentence to completion and I still vehemently disagree with it. At first I thought you were suggesting there be a fast lane as long as there is not a slow lane but, of course, that makes no sense. Then I figured out you are fine with a fast line paid by the sender as long as the slow lane meets some minimum bandwidth requirements. How can the customer complain since they are getting the extra fast line bandwidth "for free"?
One of the many obvious problems with this scheme is that it can quickly devolve to a situation that squeezes out all of the mom and pop content providers (the general public) who can't afford to pay for the fast lane. It reminds me a little of those idiotic "deals" from ISPs that let you lock in your current bandwidth and payment rate for life. As technology improves, increases in bandwidth should far exceed increases in costs.
I admit that in a static situation where my bandwidth to and from certain corporations suddenly increases is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. This seems to be the situation you envision. The problems start when the original static situation evolves over time. You can easily get into a situation where bandwidth to and from certain corporation is basically free while all other bandwidth is exorbitantly expensive. In the US, at least, the last mile is already a big corporate, unregulated rip-off. Why open the door to make it much much worse? The only way it could possibly be feasible would be for massive regulation of the minimum bandwidth and maximum fees of the slow lane. If the fast lane (and especially the slow lane) are unregulated then it will become a consumer nightmare. If you regulate it enough to work so consumers are not "slowed down or interfered with" going forward into the future then it will be a nightmare for everyone and the fast lane will be worth little.
I am also reminded of the RICO laws and things like civil forfeiture where the government can basically steal stuff from you without ever even charging you with a crime. Those bad laws were passed under the guise of "we are only going to use them on the really bad guys". Perhaps those were the intentions when those laws were passed but a few years down the road some police department reads the law carefully and figures out it can be used as a great way to raise sorely needed funding for the department. And, guess what? It is also legal. A rough rule of thumb is that any law that can be abused will be abused eventually. Why needlessly open up another channel for abuse when we gain nothing by doing so?
If you are a poor person on a sinking ship would you like a policy where the rich people get the fancy lifeboats and the poor people get lifeboats that were deemed adequate many years ago? Or would you prefer a policy where the poor and the rich are all put into the same lifeboats?
why can't the electrons get between two nuclei and cancel their repulsion (rather like muons can do)?
The problem is that the conduction electrons are spread out so they can't clump together in the space between the nuclei. This is due to the low mass of the electron. A muon is very much like an electron but is over 3,000 times more massive; this means it is 3,000 times "smaller" and thus can fit into the small space between the nuclei just fine.
The problem is not that the electron wave function can't get close to the nuclei. The problem is that the electron wave function can't get clumped together into a large enough peak to counteract the Coulomb repulsion of the nuclei. One way to see this is with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Since a muon is 3,000 times more massive than an electron, it has 3,000 times more momentum for the same motion. This extra momentum allows it to be more localized without violating Heisenberg.
One of the best physicist of the 20th century, Julian Schwinger, investigated cold fusion and felt that the physics community as a whole was closed minded about it. I *think* his idea was there was some sort of collective phenomenon (getting the palladium just right) that accounts for cold fusion. It can't be as simple as simple screening by conduction electrons. TBH, I think Schwinger was past his prime and was grasping for things he could apply his formidable intellect to that would be useful for humanity.
I believe the reason most physicists have a problem with cold fusion is the lack compelling experimental evidence combined with the lack of any satisfactory theoretical explanation. Remember that almost all of the interest in cold fusion was sparked by the totally discredit experiments by Pons and Fleischmann. The experiments could not be replicated and in new experiments there was no indication of nuclear activity.
There's no reason to think this [cold fusion] couldn't happen with palladium foil given sufficient resources.
There is at least one overwhelming reason to think this could not happen regardless of how you prepare the palladium: basic physics.
The Coulomb repulsion of the deuterons keeps them so far apart that the likelihood of fusion is exponentially small. You can muck about with the palladium until the cows come home but unless do something like replace the electrons with muons, it is unlikely you are going to induce a significant amount of cold fusion.
It is like saying that by applying sufficient resources to painting and body-work, I can fix the engine of my car.
In Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International the US Supreme Court ruled:
merely requiring generic computer implementation fails to transform [an] abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention.
Recently, after its SCO fiasco, Microsoft's biggest gun in its ceaseless war on Linux and all things FOSS has been patent extortion. IIRC, Microsoft makes a sizable chuck of change from Android devices due to the licenses for a fuzzy bunch of patents that have never been tested for validity in a court of law.
At some point, someone with deep enough pockets to risk a spin on the roulette wheel that is the US court system in regard to patents will take on Microsoft and see if the Emperor is wearing clothes or not. Microsoft owns some very smart lawyers. The lawyers know such a challenge is inevitable. They also know there is a good chance Microsoft will lose and will have to shut down its patent extortion racket. At that point they will need a plan B. This is their baby steps towards a plan B which is way too little, way too late.
I haven't canceled hundreds of orders on Amazon but I have canceled a handful. There has never been a fee or a penalty although I did have to fill in a small form explaining why I canceled.
If you did this maliciously with a bunch of items just to be a PITA then they would probably respond accordingly and cancel your account.
OTOH, I have had a seller raise the price of an item after I made an inquiry about it. That really pissed me off. I complained to Amazon but they said it was within their rules. The end result is it is stupid to make polite inquires about products (for example, asking if a used book listed as hardcover really is hardcover). You are better off just placing the order and then returning the item for a full refund if it does not match the description.
But instead of negotiating or even trying to compromise they [Google] just took their ball and left.
Here is a better analogy:
A: If you don't pay us a bunch of money we are going to shoot ourselves in the foot!
B: That's a ridiculous business proposition. We aren't going to pay you anything. Shoot yourselves if you feel you must but we don't recommend it.
A: Wah! You are such a big baby! Why won't you at least negotiate or compromise?
But instead of negotiating or even trying to compromise they [Google] just took their ball and left.
WTF? What was there to negotiate or compromise on? Paying the extortionists any non-zero amount would have been the worst business decision ever made by Google. While there were extreme options available to Google, such as law suits and massive lobbying, Google took a rather mild approach by obeying the silly law while refusing to pay the extortion which meant they simply shut down their services that would have been encumbered by the extortion racket.
Even if the complete lunacy of the extortion racket was not clear to you previously, this idiotic press release should have made it crystal clear. The Spanish news media need Google more than Google needs them. Therefore it was idiotic for the Spanish news media to try to get Google to pay them for providing them with a service they greatly desire.
When you are freely providing someone a service they greatly desire and then they want to charge *you* for providing them with this service, there is very little room for compromise or negotiation. For example, if I owned a country and passed a law that Slashdot has to pay me for every comment I post, their only logical response would be to stop allowing me to post comments. I could bitch and moan about them being big babies about it but until my position has some relationship to reality, there is really nothing to negotiate or compromise on.
buttons are expensive and can't be reconfigured on the fly.
If true, this sounds like the most important reason why buttons are better than touch-screens in dashboards. Don't you hate it when you try to raise the volume and accidentally activate the passenger seat ejector instead?
I figured out how to disable beta months ago.
Except that in this case the law was very plain and it was obvious that it was being violated. I may not like the DMCA, but it doesn't take a legal brainiac to know that refusing to comply with take-down requests (what Kim's was doing with his links vs files argument) will lead to greater legal retaliation.
What are you talking about? KDC followed the advice of his lawyers and complied with DMCA takedown notices. He was set up in a nasty sting operation where the FBI asked him to not take down a particular file (or files) in order to aid them in an investigation. He cooperated with the FBI and this is what they busted him for.
For example, the Wikipedia gives Dotcom's perspective:
In regard to Megaupload, Dotcom believes the company had actively tried to prevent copyright infringement -- its terms of service forced users to agree they would not post copyrighted material to the website. Companies or individuals with concerns that their copyright material was being posted on Megaupload were given direct access to the website to delete infringing links. Megaupload also employed 20 staff dedicated to taking down material which might infringe copyright.
KDC was hosting files so it would be silly for him to use a "links vs files" argument as you suggest. It would have also been extremely stupid for him to ignore DMCA takedown notices because obeying those notices is what gave him "safe harbor" protection. You may be a legal brainiac but what you are suggesting makes no sense and has nothing to do with reality.
You can't plan for stuff like that.
What? Yes, you absolutely can. Yes, it was absolutely predictable. Yes. YES! Look, yes. The answer to all your objecting questions is yes. Yes, he could and should have predicted that the USA would do its best to sow his ground with salt. Just fucking look at us. LOOK AT US. Of course we would do that.
Even if you can predict that no rules/laws will apply, how can you reasonably plan for that contingency? What would those plans look like? Should KDC have given up business and become a survivalist?
My wholehearted prediction would have been that KDC was on the entitled side of the justice gap and as long as he had good lawyers and followed their advice then he would have nothing to worry about. The Pirate Bay getting repeatedly stomped on was not a surprise but the attack on KDC was a huge shock to me. I still find it amazing.
Electric Sleep?
Why don't other countries have a net neutrality problem? Because they have competition among their ISPs. If an ISP tries to deliberately slow down a popular website to extort the site for extra payments, it doesn't put pressure on the website to pay. Instead it puts pressure on the ISP's customers to switch to another ISP. In most of the rest of the world, any ISP trying to pull this stunt puts itself out of business.
It only works in the U.S. because these ISPs have government-granted monopolies over the local customer base. The customer can't flee to a different ISP because there is none - the local government has made it illegal for there to be a competitor. Essentially, net neutrality is more government regulation to solve a problem caused by government regulation.
According to Ars Techinca (and many others) UK regulators officially mock US over ISP "competition":
Here's how US regulators do a broadband plan: talk about competition even while admitting there isn't enough, then tinker around the edges with running fiber to "anchor institutions" and start collecting real data on US broadband use.
Here's how they do it in the UK: order incumbent telco BT to share its fiber lines with any ISP who is willing to pay. In places where BT hasn't yet run fiber, order the company to share its ducts and poles with anyone who wants to run said fiber. In the 14 percent of the UK without meaningful broadband competition, slap price controls on Internet access to keep people from getting gouged. [...]
"Aside from small urban countries with highly concentrated populations, like Singapore, the main countries which are currently leading in the rollout and take-up of super-fast broadband are those which have had significant government intervention to support deployment, such as Japan and South Korea."
I've Googled around and I can't find any evidence that backs up your implication that consumers benefit from less government regulation of ISPs. Everything I've seen says the benefits in non-US countries stem from greater government intervention.
The nuanced Republican stance you refer to seems to be a code-phrase for BS. IMO the core of the problem is there is a lot of BS flying around because our corporate controlled "fair and balanced" media (including the NYT) refuse to call out politicians on outright lies. This gives a decided advantage to those who lie more. With no checks and balances from the media, public debate is mired in giant echo chambers filled with BS.
Thanks. I seem to be the one with an outdated mindset. I didn't know about that rule of thumb. Back when I went to school, I got by with a little help from my parents but mostly with a scholarship, loans, and a nearly full-time job. But tuition at an Ivy League school was only $5K/year and my starting salary after I got out was around $20K so even getting loans for the entire tuition would have matched your rule.
I'm glad you were able to buck the trend and find a way to pay for college that did not leave you in a financial hole you could not escape from. I still think this is not possible for the majority of students today. Sure, anyone may have been able to get the situation you found but there are not enough situations like that to go around for everyone. Having a system that puts so many college graduates into an inescapable financial black hole is very damaging to our society. It is like eating our seed corn.
When I went to school, situations like yours were open to almost everyone, even people going to Ivy League Universities.
Perhaps your mindset on this is a little outdated. I know mine was and that is the heart of the problem. For many decades student loans made sense. They were a terrific investment because the increase in your earning potential from going to college was fantastic. It paid for the loans many times over.
Unfortunately, both sides of the equation have changed drastically which has really screwed over the majority (I am guessing) of college students. On one hand, the cost of college has gone through the roof, vastly outpacing inflation and on the other hand, the ROI for going to college has tanked.
Taking out loans to go to college used to be the best investment you could make. Now you are likely to get screwed over. My editorial take on this is that it is a perfect example of capitalism run rampant. At various stages in the system, people have found ways to take advantage of (i.e. monetize) the general perception that taking out loans to go to college was a great investment. They did this by turning it into a lousy investment. It is no different from fleecing neophytes in the stock market.
Education used to be the cornerstone of the American Dream. Turning it into a terrible investment is extremely toxic to our society.
This is related to another result of extreme capitalism:
No matter how small and cheap and crappy something is, someone will figure out a way to make the same thing smaller and cheaper and crappier.
All they've done in systemd is write C code to start up services that used to be started instead by shell scripts and added the ability to make dependency resolution automatic so that services are only started when they need to be.
If that had been all then there would not be this huge controversy. You are describing a very stripped down version of uselessd which is already a stripped down version of systemd. You are ignoring 98% of what is most objectionable about systemd by reducing it to the least controversial component.
ISTM such vast oversimplifications add fuel to the fire and further polarize the debate.
No, it's called "asset forfeiture" and it does happen far too often. Hell, happening once is far too often.
In the US there are two kinds of asset forfeiture, criminal and civil:
There are two types of forfeiture cases, criminal and civil. Approximately half of all forfeiture cases practiced today are civil, although many of those are filed in parallel to a related criminal case. In civil forfeiture cases, the US Government sues the item of property, not the person; the owner is effectively a third-party claimant. [...]
In civil cases, the owner need not be judged guilty of any crime; [...] In contrast, criminal forfeiture is usually carried out in a sentence following a conviction and is a punitive act against the offender.
I don't want to put words in your mouth but I think the type of forfeiture you so strenuously (and correctly) object to is called civil asset forfeiture or civil forfeiture for short.