I think they should be allowed to teach "Intelligent Design" after they explain where their hypothesized Intelligent Designer was intelligently designed --their entire point, after all, is the claim that the complexity of life and intelligence is beyond the abilities of evolution to accomplish. Therefore, since their proposed Intelligent Designer is by-definition intelligent and complex....
I know this post is anonymous but it's pretty much spot on...
if I had some mod points I'd mod it in the morning, I'd mod it in the evening, all over this land. I'd mod it about danger, I'd mod it about a warning, but it being about Louisiana I doubt they need the modding about the love between the brothers and sisters...
Hmmmm. Now mostly I'm with you on that. I love the fact that wikileaks blows the whistle on stuff like Government sleaze, over-spends, hidden legislation, that sort of thing, but in this case, well, I'm just not so sure...
Whether we agree with it or not, we are waging a war in Afghanistan and our boys (and girls) are out there doing the best job they can (or perhaps the best job they're allowed to do anyway).
Releasing this information will be a great morale boost for the enemy and potentially make it easier for them to recruit more troops (or whatever the hell they call themselves) and give them a reason to push back (even) harder - 'cos they now know they're winning. So, a big Thanks for that from our troops I'm sure!
I don't know, but I'd guess that's a lot of the reason why the info was held back in the first place! My guess is that the home-front PR is a side effect, though possibly a welcome one.
So, whilst I'm not generally a fan of government inspired secrecy, sometimes there's a really good reason for it.
I'm talking about the guy who blew up a plane over Lockerbie, Scotland.
It's now coming out that BP was involved in convincing the UK Government to release him, in order to get drilling rights in Libya.
Actually, it turns out that you're talking sh1te because the UK Government had nothing to do with his release - it was the Scottish parliament who decided to release him and BP had no part in that decision - but nice try 'cos surely if you throw enough muck some will stick...
Well, right back atcha, because it would seem there are those who think Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was innocent anyway, and it was a CIA (and UK Gov) stitch up from start to finish. See how Cameron has said something like "well, we can look into the whole issue of Megrahi from his conviction to his release" and see how fast the US back peddles and it no longer seems so important!
From the linked article:
Back in 2000 a former CIA official told my brother, Andrew Cockburn, who undertook an investigation of the case for our newsletter CounterPunch – the factual substrate of these observations - that he had taken part in the original investigation of the PanAm bombing. He said that if the original CIA report was ever to be made public, it would provide "damning evidence" that "the Libyans were never directly involved in the Lockerbie bombing." In fact, the evidence in the CIA's possession pointed more clearly in the direction of the original suspects in the case, members of a group known as the PFLP-GC, closely linked to Iran.
The Iranians had a clear motive for an attack on an American airliner, following the destruction of an Iranian Airbus over the Persian Gulf carrying 290 passengers, including 66 children, on July 3, 1988.
It does not appear that this guy is insane. He's just a moron. He should be tried, and if found guilty, the court should take his stupidity and intent into consideration when sentencing. Because he was an idiot rather than a spy or saboteur, he will likely get a light sentence.
Yep, I couldn't agree more. The problem here is that he embarrassed some powerful people and they're wielding their power to try and grab him. Just the fact that they're trying so hard to get him, when he obviously isn't some hell-bent terrorist, but is just a buffoon, is reason enough to not extradite him!
But everything you said will happen in a UK court, so everyone is happy...
What is wrong is IMHO a segment of the UK public are trying to prevent him from even going to trial much less being sentenced.
They have decided that the US will impose the harshest penalty on this man when they have not imposed any penalty at all yet.
Also there has been no trial at all yet. So you are also assuming that he is totally telling you the truth. The he didn't crack a single password and he didn't delete a single file.
All very trusting of an admitted criminal.
Erm, no. Not quite. He committed the crime in the UK and should be tried in the UK. He admits the crime and wants to be tried in the UK. We ALL know he's admitted to the crime. We all know he wants to be tried in the UK. He is (pretty much) scared shitless that he's going to be thrown to the lions and he'll be made an example of - and that in itself probably constitutes a cruel and unusual punishment.
And when you say crack a single password you make him sound like some evil genius when what he actually did was use remote access to various systems that mostly had the default password set. Calling that "cracking" is akin to calling someone who can cut a pack of cards a card sharp! If he did find any passwords that weren't the default setting I'd suggest that "guessing" would be a better word that cracking!
If he did more then the US should prove it, but AFAIK they've just said "Hey, we're The US-of-A and we want you to give us one of your people because he made us look like a bunch of amateurs and we're trying to save face".
The ambiguity falls on where this crime was comitted, the individual was not in the States, but the information he was accessing was. The victims of the crimes are in the States and thats why it should be held there. (As there is no victim in Pre-marital Sex, it wouldn't make sense to extradite someone to the middle east either).
Not serving Extradition will only serve to sever the ties between the two nations.
It is also illegal to hack into computers in the UK, so he did indeed commit a crime here, and as for the no victim in Pre-marital Sex argument, I think Allah might disagree with you there!
As I see it there are a few issues to deal with here. The extradition treaty states that there are a number of reasons why a crime might be considered suitable for an extradition, and one of those is the value put upon the damages caused by the crime - and guess what - yep, full marks, because Gary's hacking apparently caused a sufficiently large amount of damage that fixing it took the US muppet security services past that magic $$$ figure! Personally, I think the figure was suitably inflated to get to that point and the actual amount of damage done is considerably smaller - so, US muppet security services, let's see the paper work on what damage was actually done and the costs to rectify it - and if you're gonna include the cost of setting a non-default password here and there, and perhaps hiring someone who has a clue to fix your woefully inadequate security, be prepared for me to laugh at you!
The other issue is, as discussed, the widely held view that if extradited he will be thrown to the lions for embarrassing the US muppet security services.
Insisting on extradition will only serve to weaken the ties between the two nations because it's mostly a face saving exercise - we don't have to secure our servers because the whole World is so scared of us they'll let us extraordinarily rendition any poor schmo we feel like water boarding and locking up in G-mit for years at a time without due process, just 'cos we're The 'Mercins!
McKinnon was a fool and he certainly deserves some punishment, but he doesn't deserve to be crucified!
... You invested in the United States? Apparently that was a big mistake and hopefully you learned your lesson. You can't expect every country you invest in to apologize and pay you back when your investments go negative. That's not how investing works. If you didn't want to lose your money, maybe you shouldn't have been chasing the highly rated securities with highly rated returns that sounded too damn good to be true. Now you know not to trust our rating companies and our securities.
The problem here is that BP didn't set out to fill the GoM with oil - indeed far from it, as they most certainly wanted to get the oil out of the ground so they could sell it! Goldman Sachs, on the other hand, put together a portfolio of investments that were designed to fail and then SOLD THEM to people.
Yes we invested in the United States because we were under the impression that you are an honourable people who wouldn't go out of your way to screw us over! Are we mistaken? Is that really the message you want sent out to the rest of the World for when these bad economic times are over?
As I understand it, a UK bank lost $840M and will get back less than a tenth of that, if anything. Where's the cries of anguish to make Goldman Sachs "clean up the mess" and get a hefty fine eh?.
None of the people were altered. Some ugly-looking screens were. They were to busy with something else to do a brilliant job about the alteration. You'd think they had something else on their minds.
My, the amount of vitrol floating about in these waters is making me sound like a BP apologist! Ah well, my karma is good enough to deal with it.
Can you just imagine the furore if word got out that the Crisis Centre was shutdown for an hour whilst a photographer took suitable pictures? OMG now that'd be a story! So some numbnuts took a picture and noticed all wasn't right - I agree with a previous poster that it should have gone out as is, but what a temptation to just photoshop it to put something on the empty screens eh!
Storm in a tea cup when it's hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico - really people, we've all got bigger fish to fry!
Basically you have to be incompetent all around to get a shitty photo in the first place.
LMAO! But if they'd hired Lord Lichfield you folks'd be up in arms at the waste of money hiring a photographer who's got a clue!
And we're talking about the biggest manmade ecological disaster in quite some time, I want to see every fucking screen in use in there 24/7...
COAFB! And you wonder why they wanted to make it look like all the screens were in use - it's because of muppets like you who think that all the BP staff, from the highest exec to the cleaners in their London HQ should somehow be lending a hand during this monumental FUBAR! Get a grip people!
What kind of people are they hiring to work on the spill?
I expect they've got all their Marketing Dept, car pool drivers, warehouse personnel, programmers, canteen staff, and librarians taking diving lessons and "Deep Sea Drilling for the Layman" courses as we speak, so they can be parachuted in to help! (and parachuting lessons, obviously!)
Really! What's with all the hysteria? This is the Salem Witch trials vs MacCarthyism in a fight to the death to see who can make their heads explode first! So many people digging so deep to find anything at all to discredit BP Amoco when they're already so damaged there's no point, unless you're after a share of the fallout?
The latest is the stories about BP lobbying for the release of al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie Bomber. Now I say "Lockerbie Bomber but there's really a lot of evidence to suggest he wasn't the one, and the UK and US Govs know it and certainly don't want anyone raking over those old coals - no sirree-bob, but if BP were looking at oil interests off the coast of Libya and helped with some lobbying that suddenly makes the oil spill worse - regardless of the fact that many US oil companies are also sniffing around Libya and Gaddaffi at the moment, and ANYTHING that can be done to damage BP Amoco further can only help the profits of those American companies!
OK OK... I know BP aren't the innocent fluffy bunnies they'd like us to think they are, but there's one hell of an elephant in the room when the US cries foul over this but did NOTHING, ZIP, NADA about events like Bhopal until last month when some American company was fined $100000 or so - and that affected 100's of thousands of people with 15000 deaths - FORTY TWO YEARS AGO!
And why is BP taking all the flak when Transocean owned and operated the drill rig. Haliburton is a drilling services company that poured the cement plug that likely failed prior to the blowout. Schlumberger, another drilling-services contractor, was on the rig in the days leading up to the explosion to perform key safety tests, though their services were never put to use, and Cameron made the blowout preventer that failed to stop the uncontrolled flow of oil and gas.
Sure, it's BP's responsibility to clean up, and they do seem to be actively doing so, but don't tell me the other companies carry none of the blame for the failure because that's just unpossible!
BP= BIG Polluter which translates to any language as "BIG PayDay" for all after they are taken toe the cleaners (the court)!:)
Actually, since British Petroleum (BP) merged with the American Oil Company (Amoco) and became "BP Amoco" the "BP" doesn't actually stand for anything anymore, it's just a "B" and a "P", but lets not allow facts to get in the way of the ranting eh!
There was an article about companies with large freezers using off peak electricity to cool their freezers down an extra degree or two thereby saving themselves from using some peak power. Clever stuff eh!
Also, if they can run a DC line from Holland to Norway (580km) why not have Iceland run something similar (twice as long?), maybe via the Faroe Islands, to Scotland so they can sell their cheap/green leccy to Europe?
... Also, in this case, there appears to be a culture of negligence...
There has certainly been a lot of noise in that area, but mostly made by the sub-contractors, who just may have an ulterior motive for throwing up such a smoke screen!
It's a shame there aren't smaller versions of this skimmer device that could be bolted to the deck of all the local fishing/shrimping vessels so they could go fill their holds with oil and get paid (by BP of course) to be out there cleaning it up, plus the full cost of cleaning their vessels of oil contamination once they stop skimming for oil and go back to fishing/shrimping.
It's simply not the ISP's business to care what people use their connections for, in the same way it's not up to the Post Office to care what people post!
It's also just bare-faced cheek for the record companies, et al, to lobby for legislation that makes some other industry pay to shore up their failing business paradigm!
Hmm about 25,000,000 cars registered in CA give or take, so at a 2kwh charging load thats 2,000 & 25,000,000 = 50,000,000,000 or 50 gigawatt hours and that is more then the entire supply that the state of California has available and thats a combination of all available fuels we have on line.
There will obviously be times when a large proportion of the vehicles are plugged in (eg overnight) but many of them won't require a full charge, so factor in some of the more advanced options that have been proposed, such as the grid being able to exert some control over the vehicles that are attached, eg using them as storage (ie the grid can decide to pull _some_ current from _some_ of the vehicles to balance the grid whilst more power stations can be brought online to better cope with surges) and all those EV's plugged into the grid, but viewed as part of the grid might actually make the power delivery considerably better.
There would have to be some level of control retained by the owner though, because I can see it being somewhat of a bummer if you got into your car and the battery was dead 'cos the grid drained it!
Still , as someone pointed out , statistically , it's very likely that electric cars will charge at night , as most people will be working in the day , and will have to recharge there cars when they get home in the evening.
Hmmmm. What about a company perk of being able to charge your vehicle at work? That would seem to be a great incentive to get people into EV's in the first place (ie make it a non-taxable perk to charge at work).
Actually, I wasn't seriously suggesting they stop with the tinternet malarky, or indeed stop building roads! I was using sarcasm to try and make a point, but thanks for playing.
As for the monetary waste, at only £40k, you should see the amount the government has spent on failed NHS I.T. projects. It is truly astounding how corrupt these people are that hundreds of millions can be paid to 'private contractors' with no discernible benefit.
Indeed. £40K is chump change and really not worth getting too excited about!
It does seem a shame that these apps are only for the iPhone because there are dev env's out there that allow the code to be compiled up for iPhone and others (Symbian, etc) which would seem to be a much better idea, but maybe it already is and the reporters are just concentrating on the waste of money and hating Apple!
Cumbria, Northumbria - let's call the whole thing off!
Honestly, I've simply not been paying attention to the story 'cos it's just not that interesting, but as the news companies have nothing else to play with at the moment it's taking all the headlines, just like the Cumbria one!
Ok, but maybe the taxpayer dollars should be spent on services that everyone can make use of, not just iPhone users.
Good point, so we should berate them for setting up all the Gov websites too, as not everyone has access to the internet, and obviously any new road building must be shelved until we can ensure everyone has a car!
I'd say it's just the BBC looking for news on a slow news day. See also the sh1tstorm they whipped up about some Gov Dept screwing up a list of which schools were going to lose their rebuilding funds - some apparently were told they were safe and weren't so the BBC went and interviewed headmasters of said schools and the (usually Left Wing) headmasters were all very upset about it when the reporters asked them the important questions like "How do you feel"!
And let's ask when these apps were all written? Was it since the election or perhaps before the election?
Anyway, so perhaps the BBC headline should read something like "Government spends money on things and we've nothing more interesting to report on whilst all our reporters are in Cumbria again!".
The US did NOT recognise copyrights for foreign authors. They didn't recognise it for software. So given these two incontrovertible facts, please tell me how copyright is inalienable and not a construct of government.
Do you not think it is morally right for the builder of something, the creator of some work (be it a chair or a car or a house or something less tangible like a painting or a film or a song), to profit from their undertakings if they so wish?
In my mind it is the creator of a work's privileged to set the price at whatever level they think appropriate and it is the consumer's right to not buy it if they think it's too pricey, but if you don't like the price you simply don't have the right to take it without paying!
Now I'd agree wholeheartedly that 100 years seems like a long time, but that's another argument to have once we can agree that people should be able to set their own prices in the first place!
Slashdot Mirror
I think they should be allowed to teach "Intelligent Design" after they explain where their hypothesized Intelligent Designer was intelligently designed --their entire point, after all, is the claim that the complexity of life and intelligence is beyond the abilities of evolution to accomplish. Therefore, since their proposed Intelligent Designer is by-definition intelligent and complex....
I know this post is anonymous but it's pretty much spot on ... ...
if I had some mod points I'd mod it in the morning, I'd mod it in the evening, all over this land. I'd mod it about danger, I'd mod it about a warning, but it being about Louisiana I doubt they need the modding about the love between the brothers and sisters
Whether we agree with it or not, we are waging a war in Afghanistan and our boys (and girls) are out there doing the best job they can (or perhaps the best job they're allowed to do anyway).
Releasing this information will be a great morale boost for the enemy and potentially make it easier for them to recruit more troops (or whatever the hell they call themselves) and give them a reason to push back (even) harder - 'cos they now know they're winning. So, a big Thanks for that from our troops I'm sure!
I don't know, but I'd guess that's a lot of the reason why the info was held back in the first place! My guess is that the home-front PR is a side effect, though possibly a welcome one.
So, whilst I'm not generally a fan of government inspired secrecy, sometimes there's a really good reason for it.
I'm talking about the guy who blew up a plane over Lockerbie, Scotland.
It's now coming out that BP was involved in convincing the UK Government to release him, in order to get drilling rights in Libya.
Actually, it turns out that you're talking sh1te because the UK Government had nothing to do with his release - it was the Scottish parliament who decided to release him and BP had no part in that decision - but nice try 'cos surely if you throw enough muck some will stick ...
Well, right back atcha, because it would seem there are those who think Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was innocent anyway, and it was a CIA (and UK Gov) stitch up from start to finish. See how Cameron has said something like "well, we can look into the whole issue of Megrahi from his conviction to his release" and see how fast the US back peddles and it no longer seems so important!
From the linked article:
Back in 2000 a former CIA official told my brother, Andrew Cockburn, who undertook an investigation of the case for our newsletter CounterPunch – the factual substrate of these observations - that he had taken part in the original investigation of the PanAm bombing. He said that if the original CIA report was ever to be made public, it would provide "damning evidence" that "the Libyans were never directly involved in the Lockerbie bombing." In fact, the evidence in the CIA's possession pointed more clearly in the direction of the original suspects in the case, members of a group known as the PFLP-GC, closely linked to Iran.
The Iranians had a clear motive for an attack on an American airliner, following the destruction of an Iranian Airbus over the Persian Gulf carrying 290 passengers, including 66 children, on July 3, 1988.
Have a nice day ...
... What we in the US would like to know is if it is also true that you did it to gain contracts for BP.
apparently BP had nothing to do with his release
Now, can we move on?
Sadly it would seem pretty inconsequential to British authorities also. They seem to have no interest at all in fighting this extradition.
What fighting:
USA: Can we have him please?
UK: Erm, no.
What's so difficult about that? The UK just needs to grow a pair!
It does not appear that this guy is insane. He's just a moron. He should be tried, and if found guilty, the court should take his stupidity and intent into consideration when sentencing. Because he was an idiot rather than a spy or saboteur, he will likely get a light sentence.
Yep, I couldn't agree more. The problem here is that he embarrassed some powerful people and they're wielding their power to try and grab him. Just the fact that they're trying so hard to get him, when he obviously isn't some hell-bent terrorist, but is just a buffoon, is reason enough to not extradite him!
But everything you said will happen in a UK court, so everyone is happy ...
What is wrong is IMHO a segment of the UK public are trying to prevent him from even going to trial much less being sentenced. They have decided that the US will impose the harshest penalty on this man when they have not imposed any penalty at all yet.
Also there has been no trial at all yet. So you are also assuming that he is totally telling you the truth. The he didn't crack a single password and he didn't delete a single file.
All very trusting of an admitted criminal.
Erm, no. Not quite. He committed the crime in the UK and should be tried in the UK. He admits the crime and wants to be tried in the UK. We ALL know he's admitted to the crime. We all know he wants to be tried in the UK. He is (pretty much) scared shitless that he's going to be thrown to the lions and he'll be made an example of - and that in itself probably constitutes a cruel and unusual punishment.
And when you say crack a single password you make him sound like some evil genius when what he actually did was use remote access to various systems that mostly had the default password set. Calling that "cracking" is akin to calling someone who can cut a pack of cards a card sharp! If he did find any passwords that weren't the default setting I'd suggest that "guessing" would be a better word that cracking!
If he did more then the US should prove it, but AFAIK they've just said "Hey, we're The US-of-A and we want you to give us one of your people because he made us look like a bunch of amateurs and we're trying to save face".
The ambiguity falls on where this crime was comitted, the individual was not in the States, but the information he was accessing was. The victims of the crimes are in the States and thats why it should be held there. (As there is no victim in Pre-marital Sex, it wouldn't make sense to extradite someone to the middle east either).
Not serving Extradition will only serve to sever the ties between the two nations.
It is also illegal to hack into computers in the UK, so he did indeed commit a crime here, and as for the no victim in Pre-marital Sex argument, I think Allah might disagree with you there!
As I see it there are a few issues to deal with here. The extradition treaty states that there are a number of reasons why a crime might be considered suitable for an extradition, and one of those is the value put upon the damages caused by the crime - and guess what - yep, full marks, because Gary's hacking apparently caused a sufficiently large amount of damage that fixing it took the US muppet security services past that magic $$$ figure! Personally, I think the figure was suitably inflated to get to that point and the actual amount of damage done is considerably smaller - so, US muppet security services, let's see the paper work on what damage was actually done and the costs to rectify it - and if you're gonna include the cost of setting a non-default password here and there, and perhaps hiring someone who has a clue to fix your woefully inadequate security, be prepared for me to laugh at you!
The other issue is, as discussed, the widely held view that if extradited he will be thrown to the lions for embarrassing the US muppet security services.
Insisting on extradition will only serve to weaken the ties between the two nations because it's mostly a face saving exercise - we don't have to secure our servers because the whole World is so scared of us they'll let us extraordinarily rendition any poor schmo we feel like water boarding and locking up in G-mit for years at a time without due process, just 'cos we're The 'Mercins!
McKinnon was a fool and he certainly deserves some punishment, but he doesn't deserve to be crucified!
... You invested in the United States? Apparently that was a big mistake and hopefully you learned your lesson. You can't expect every country you invest in to apologize and pay you back when your investments go negative. That's not how investing works. If you didn't want to lose your money, maybe you shouldn't have been chasing the highly rated securities with highly rated returns that sounded too damn good to be true. Now you know not to trust our rating companies and our securities.
The problem here is that BP didn't set out to fill the GoM with oil - indeed far from it, as they most certainly wanted to get the oil out of the ground so they could sell it! Goldman Sachs, on the other hand, put together a portfolio of investments that were designed to fail and then SOLD THEM to people.
Yes we invested in the United States because we were under the impression that you are an honourable people who wouldn't go out of your way to screw us over! Are we mistaken? Is that really the message you want sent out to the rest of the World for when these bad economic times are over?
As I understand it, a UK bank lost $840M and will get back less than a tenth of that, if anything. Where's the cries of anguish to make Goldman Sachs "clean up the mess" and get a hefty fine eh?.
Scotland is part of Britain.....
None of the people were altered. Some ugly-looking screens were. They were to busy with something else to do a brilliant job about the alteration. You'd think they had something else on their minds.
My, the amount of vitrol floating about in these waters is making me sound like a BP apologist! Ah well, my karma is good enough to deal with it.
Can you just imagine the furore if word got out that the Crisis Centre was shutdown for an hour whilst a photographer took suitable pictures? OMG now that'd be a story! So some numbnuts took a picture and noticed all wasn't right - I agree with a previous poster that it should have gone out as is, but what a temptation to just photoshop it to put something on the empty screens eh!
Storm in a tea cup when it's hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico - really people, we've all got bigger fish to fry!
Basically you have to be incompetent all around to get a shitty photo in the first place.
LMAO! But if they'd hired Lord Lichfield you folks'd be up in arms at the waste of money hiring a photographer who's got a clue!
And we're talking about the biggest manmade ecological disaster in quite some time, I want to see every fucking screen in use in there 24/7 ...
COAFB! And you wonder why they wanted to make it look like all the screens were in use - it's because of muppets like you who think that all the BP staff, from the highest exec to the cleaners in their London HQ should somehow be lending a hand during this monumental FUBAR! Get a grip people!
What kind of people are they hiring to work on the spill?
I expect they've got all their Marketing Dept, car pool drivers, warehouse personnel, programmers, canteen staff, and librarians taking diving lessons and "Deep Sea Drilling for the Layman" courses as we speak, so they can be parachuted in to help! (and parachuting lessons, obviously!)
Really! What's with all the hysteria? This is the Salem Witch trials vs MacCarthyism in a fight to the death to see who can make their heads explode first! So many people digging so deep to find anything at all to discredit BP Amoco when they're already so damaged there's no point, unless you're after a share of the fallout?
The latest is the stories about BP lobbying for the release of al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie Bomber. Now I say "Lockerbie Bomber but there's really a lot of evidence to suggest he wasn't the one, and the UK and US Govs know it and certainly don't want anyone raking over those old coals - no sirree-bob, but if BP were looking at oil interests off the coast of Libya and helped with some lobbying that suddenly makes the oil spill worse - regardless of the fact that many US oil companies are also sniffing around Libya and Gaddaffi at the moment, and ANYTHING that can be done to damage BP Amoco further can only help the profits of those American companies!
OK OK ... I know BP aren't the innocent fluffy bunnies they'd like us to think they are, but there's one hell of an elephant in the room when the US cries foul over this but did NOTHING, ZIP, NADA about events like Bhopal until last month when some American company was fined $100000 or so - and that affected 100's of thousands of people with 15000 deaths - FORTY TWO YEARS AGO!
And why is BP taking all the flak when Transocean owned and operated the drill rig. Haliburton is a drilling services company that poured the cement plug that likely failed prior to the blowout. Schlumberger, another drilling-services contractor, was on the rig in the days leading up to the explosion to perform key safety tests, though their services were never put to use, and Cameron made the blowout preventer that failed to stop the uncontrolled flow of oil and gas. Sure, it's BP's responsibility to clean up, and they do seem to be actively doing so, but don't tell me the other companies carry none of the blame for the failure because that's just unpossible!
What does BP stand for?
BP= BIG Polluter which translates to any language as "BIG PayDay" for all after they are taken toe the cleaners (the court)! :)
Actually, since British Petroleum (BP) merged with the American Oil Company (Amoco) and became "BP Amoco" the "BP" doesn't actually stand for anything anymore, it's just a "B" and a "P", but lets not allow facts to get in the way of the ranting eh!
Also, if they can run a DC line from Holland to Norway (580km) why not have Iceland run something similar (twice as long?), maybe via the Faroe Islands, to Scotland so they can sell their cheap/green leccy to Europe?
Depends on what they're cauterizing, actually. Many operations do end up smelling like grilled meat.
... Also, in this case, there appears to be a culture of negligence ...
There has certainly been a lot of noise in that area, but mostly made by the sub-contractors, who just may have an ulterior motive for throwing up such a smoke screen!
It's a shame there aren't smaller versions of this skimmer device that could be bolted to the deck of all the local fishing/shrimping vessels so they could go fill their holds with oil and get paid (by BP of course) to be out there cleaning it up, plus the full cost of cleaning their vessels of oil contamination once they stop skimming for oil and go back to fishing/shrimping.
It's also just bare-faced cheek for the record companies, et al, to lobby for legislation that makes some other industry pay to shore up their failing business paradigm!
The ISP's should tell 'em to take a running jump!
Hmm about 25,000,000 cars registered in CA give or take, so at a 2kwh charging load thats 2,000 & 25,000,000 = 50,000,000,000 or 50 gigawatt hours and that is more then the entire supply that the state of California has available and thats a combination of all available fuels we have on line.
There will obviously be times when a large proportion of the vehicles are plugged in (eg overnight) but many of them won't require a full charge, so factor in some of the more advanced options that have been proposed, such as the grid being able to exert some control over the vehicles that are attached, eg using them as storage (ie the grid can decide to pull _some_ current from _some_ of the vehicles to balance the grid whilst more power stations can be brought online to better cope with surges) and all those EV's plugged into the grid, but viewed as part of the grid might actually make the power delivery considerably better.
There would have to be some level of control retained by the owner though, because I can see it being somewhat of a bummer if you got into your car and the battery was dead 'cos the grid drained it!
Still , as someone pointed out , statistically , it's very likely that electric cars will charge at night , as most people will be working in the day , and will have to recharge there cars when they get home in the evening.
Hmmmm. What about a company perk of being able to charge your vehicle at work? That would seem to be a great incentive to get people into EV's in the first place (ie make it a non-taxable perk to charge at work).
Actually, I wasn't seriously suggesting they stop with the tinternet malarky, or indeed stop building roads! I was using sarcasm to try and make a point, but thanks for playing.
As for the monetary waste, at only £40k, you should see the amount the government has spent on failed NHS I.T. projects. It is truly astounding how corrupt these people are that hundreds of millions can be paid to 'private contractors' with no discernible benefit.
Indeed. £40K is chump change and really not worth getting too excited about!
It does seem a shame that these apps are only for the iPhone because there are dev env's out there that allow the code to be compiled up for iPhone and others (Symbian, etc) which would seem to be a much better idea, but maybe it already is and the reporters are just concentrating on the waste of money and hating Apple!
Honestly, I've simply not been paying attention to the story 'cos it's just not that interesting, but as the news companies have nothing else to play with at the moment it's taking all the headlines, just like the Cumbria one!
Ok, but maybe the taxpayer dollars should be spent on services that everyone can make use of, not just iPhone users.
Good point, so we should berate them for setting up all the Gov websites too, as not everyone has access to the internet, and obviously any new road building must be shelved until we can ensure everyone has a car!
I'd say it's just the BBC looking for news on a slow news day. See also the sh1tstorm they whipped up about some Gov Dept screwing up a list of which schools were going to lose their rebuilding funds - some apparently were told they were safe and weren't so the BBC went and interviewed headmasters of said schools and the (usually Left Wing) headmasters were all very upset about it when the reporters asked them the important questions like "How do you feel"!
And let's ask when these apps were all written? Was it since the election or perhaps before the election?
Anyway, so perhaps the BBC headline should read something like "Government spends money on things and we've nothing more interesting to report on whilst all our reporters are in Cumbria again!".
Ask the Estate of Charles Dickens:
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/pubd/dickens_usa.html
The US did NOT recognise copyrights for foreign authors. They didn't recognise it for software. So given these two incontrovertible facts, please tell me how copyright is inalienable and not a construct of government.
Do you not think it is morally right for the builder of something, the creator of some work (be it a chair or a car or a house or something less tangible like a painting or a film or a song), to profit from their undertakings if they so wish?
In my mind it is the creator of a work's privileged to set the price at whatever level they think appropriate and it is the consumer's right to not buy it if they think it's too pricey, but if you don't like the price you simply don't have the right to take it without paying!
Now I'd agree wholeheartedly that 100 years seems like a long time, but that's another argument to have once we can agree that people should be able to set their own prices in the first place!
Once. I mentioned to my Dad how neat the centripetal force was. Then he pulled me off.
There, fixed that for you ... and will you call the social services or should I?