These dupes send a clear message that the Slashdot staff, who are *paid* to work for a for-profit company....
That's because you're doing it all wrong. The staff doesn't care. But there is a solution; you mention that they work for a for-profit company. Gentlemen, I give you the contact information for the Open Source Technology Group, Slashdot's parent company:
Gmail is a bad example. Thirty-one privacy and civil liberties organizations have urged Google to suspend it.
That's why it's a perfect example. "Thirty-one privacy and civil liberties organizations" think it's an invasion of privacy, and would probably equate it (approximately) with spyware. Other people (and, presumably, organizations) don't have a problem with it. I certainly don't. So--what is it? Would you make Gmail illegal? Something tells me a significant number of Slashdotters wouldn't; who, then, makes the decision?
Seriously, this is an outstanding example of why legislative control is at best worthless, and more likely actively harmful. There's an old legal saying that "good cases make bad law." That is, when we try to achieve a just result in a particular case, we end up with a law that may serve that end well, but ultimately creates more problems than it solves.
This goes double when the law concerns technology. The tech world is noted for the rapidity with which is advances; the legal world is noted for its resistance to change and advancement. When the latter regulates the former, it will inevitably lead to a stifling of future development. Definitions and phraseology become hyper-critical. For example, let's look at "spyware." How do you define it? What would you call a program that quietly looks at everything you type, taking note of some words as being particularly interesting? I'd call it a spellchecker. How about a daemon that goes through your e-mail and reports back to an agent information about how many e-mails you get from a particular sender, what kind of things you talk about, etc.? I'd call it an adaptive mail filter (Bayesian or similar). How about a webmail service that looks at your e-mail, analyzes it, and uses that analysis to present advertisements relevant to you? I think the term for that is Gmail.
Yes, these examples are contrived; I deliberately chose them to demonstrate a point. I'm trying to show that even the best-intentioned law can have dramatic effects down the line, effects that we can't even begin to predict. There's another truism in law that if the case goes to court, the lawyers have already failed. The principle holds true here as well: if the Legislature gets involved, there are no winners, only losers.
If you have a material that contains a mixture of Plutonium and U238 and U235, you can extract the individual elements through certain processes.
I believe the OP meant that the plutonium could be extracted and reused as fuel. U235 can be extracted from a mixture of various isotopes of uranium, but doing so is difficult and expensive.
Uranium, chemically speaking, is uranium, regardless of the isotope. Remember, atomic number (and element, really) is based upon the number of protons. Isotopes differ only in the number of neutrons present; they have different masses, but are chemically identical. As such, various isotopes cannot be separated by chemical means, making separation very difficult. The best ways to separate isotopes are through diffusion, or through centrifuges. Due to, among other things, the trivial difference (less than two percent) in mass between the fissionable and non-fissionable, this process is not particularly efficient, and thus extremely expensive. Extremely expensive means that great resources are required, limiting access to the process.
The point is that while the waste can be separated, it is highly impractical for anybody but national governments of profitable countries. Stealing the material and reprocessing is a risk so close to zero as to be irrelevant.
I've personally spent the last 6 months looking for work, I've had my resume tuned, I have 25 years of technical experience, and I've made it clear I'll do almost anything, and I have not had a single interview. I'm not alone, I have a couple hundred friends and acquaintances who've been unemployed for between 2 and 3.5 years.
And, at the same time, I'm twenty-three years old, haven't graduated from college yet, and had two jobs come looking for me in the past two years. Not to mention the raise I got last month.
Perhaps you need to consider upgrading your skillset, or possibly upgrading your attitude.
Putting a percentage bounty on things makes for a dumb law. Instead of encouraging whistleblowing at an early date (when less damage has been done), it encourages delaying the whistleblowing as long as possible to rake in the best rewards.
Except that there's competition here, too. If I know that Foomatic, Inc. is committing fraud, and I can get 10% of the proceeds of a fraud suit, then I have an incentive to wait. However, if you and I both know, then we both have an incentive to wait, in the form of a bigger payoff, but we also have an incentive to report early, in the form of each other: if you bring suit before I do, I get nothing. Therefore, it's in my best interest to file the suit as soon as I have a solid case; if you beat me to the punch, I'm left out in the cold.
It also raises the possibility of us colluding to delay, but the expected payout would have to at least double in value for that to be worthwhile, and there's the additional problem of the Prisoner's Dilemma. On top of that, even if we collude, this isn't a closed system. We both know, but if we know, who's to say that Marilyn, down in Accounting, doesn't, and isn't prepping her own suit, to beat us both to the punch?
There is an encouragement to wait until a solid case exists, though; bringing the suit early will result in a negative outcome (losing the case, plus lawyer's fees). This is a good thing, as it protects the innocent, and also encourages good cases against the guilty, preventing them from being warned off by a premature filing.
Still, for the kind of money that is involved, who wants another job? There's a lot of surf needs riding.
For the record, both Jim and Bev have pledged to use the proceeds from the suit to further their civil rights causes.
Jim March broke the news last night over on The High Road; I submitted the story last night, but was rejected. Anyhow, follow the link, and you can read Jim's commentary, and discuss the case with him (he's a senior member and very active participant over at THR). All sorts of little tidbits over there--the suit has been in the works since November, but a gag order was just lifted yesterday. Somebody else mentioned that the plaintiffs get a 30% bounty on the damages, or 20% if the state provides legal assistance (that should be 15%, not 20%, BTW). He also discusses the basis for the fraud suit, and the somewhat unique method (Qui Tam) they've chosen to fight Diebold; he likens it to the tax evasion case against Al Capone. Definitely a good, lively discussion over there; well worth a read.
From the article: Whether or not you do, US-CERT advises increasing your Internet Explorer security settings, per Microsoft's instructions. (Alas, the higher setting disables parts of Slate's interface.)
Sorry, you seem to have misspelled "Alas, the higher setting highlights Slate's use of insecure and nonstandard features." You might want to have that keyboard checked.
I've read slashdot since 1997 for the interesting tech stories. In that time it's become, politically, too much of an echo chamber. Hardly a substantial exchange of views. I know politics isn't the primary bailiwick of the site, but one might expect more fromk seemingly intelligent readers.
I don't presume to speak for others, but as for myself, I generally just stay out of policital arguments on Slashdot (and most other places) unless I can add something, like solid fact from a neutral source. Anything else, and I'm just getting into a flamewar. Nobody gets convinced, it just annoys the pig, or something like that. Anyhow, when one side talks, and the other ignores the first, it does tend to sound one-sided.
#2. All DNA samples take from #1 are to be PURGED COMPLETELY from any databases after 30 days.
You mean, just like the database of people submitting to a background check for purchase of a firearm was purged (search for "Texas"), as requred by law? Yeah, I trust my government to scrub the database like it says it will.
Say, did I hear something about a bridge for sale?
I'm sure the maintainence people have a whole list of procedures to follow when servicing anywhere near the blance [sic] weights.
Yup. Don't drill holes in the things, then snort the dust. Always a sensible precaution.
Other than that, no, not really. DU is inert; it's considered safe. Hell, COSI, a science museum in Columbus, OH, has a slug of the stuff, right next to a slug of lead, and a few others, for demonstrating density.
Note: I work on airplanes. Right now, an A-26 invader. The counterweights for that aircraft are lead, but we use the same precautions. The head mechanic on the project flies A300's for UPS, and has been a mechanic for many years, including in the military.
You are not being held accountable solely for what you think or feel, but how you express such feelings.
True, to a point. "Hate crime" laws prescribe an additional penalty for an action based upon the victim's membership in a protected class. Ergo, if I go out and beat the stuffing out of a white guy, I go to prison for a year; if I go beat up a black guy in exactly the same way, I go to prison for a year, plus another year for the "hate crime." Such laws criminalize thought; they add an additional penalty not based on the damage actually inflicted upon the victim, but based on the thoughts and feelings of the aggressor toward the victim. In that way, they actually discriminate against those not in the protected classes, depriving them of their right to "equal protection of the laws" (14th Amendment); in this case, they are less protected that the "victim" classes.
In reality, such equal protection is even further eroded by the fact that white-on-black (or other minority) violence is usually prosecuted with the additional "hate crime" charge, but minority-on-white violence is rarely prosecuted that way, even when the aggressor minority demonstrates his "hateful" intent. Equal protection indeed. In any case, these laws amount to little more than thoughtcrime; punish the act, not the thought.
Bomb-grade plutonium is almost pure Pu239 which is made by U238 capturing a neutron.
Essentially correct; you didn't mention the double beta decay, but that's essentially a given, considering the instability of Uranium 239 and Neptunium 239.
However, Chernobyl was a new reactor with relatively good safety equipment and excellent reliability. It was just misused.
Enh...not so much. Yes, Chernobyl was a new facility; that said, it didn't have a good safety record. RMBK 1000 reactors all over the Soviet Union had problems, but the KGB clamped down on that information; it is only recently that such information has come to light. In fact, Chernobyl 1 had problems to the now-famous Chernobyl 4, but not so severe; the KGB moved in and hushed things up so quickly and efficiently that even the other Chernobyl reactor operators didn't know about the problem. With such a closed, secretive attitude toward reactor safety, it was inevitable that mistakes would be repeated, and, indeed, they were. The only reason Chernobyl 4 became well-known is that the radiation cloud moved into western Europe, where people started raising questions. In any case, the safety issues with the RMBK-1000 reactors were serious, and known (if only to some) even at Chernobyl.
Slashdot Mirror
These dupes send a clear message that the Slashdot staff, who are *paid* to work for a for-profit company....
That's because you're doing it all wrong. The staff doesn't care. But there is a solution; you mention that they work for a for-profit company. Gentlemen, I give you the contact information for the Open Source Technology Group, Slashdot's parent company:
(Source: http://www.ostg.com/contact/index.htm) You want the editors to, erm, edit? Complain to their bosses.Gmail is a bad example. Thirty-one privacy and civil liberties organizations have urged Google to suspend it.
That's why it's a perfect example. "Thirty-one privacy and civil liberties organizations" think it's an invasion of privacy, and would probably equate it (approximately) with spyware. Other people (and, presumably, organizations) don't have a problem with it. I certainly don't. So--what is it? Would you make Gmail illegal? Something tells me a significant number of Slashdotters wouldn't; who, then, makes the decision?
Could this become another CAN-SPAM?
CAN (sorry, couldn't resist) and will.
Seriously, this is an outstanding example of why legislative control is at best worthless, and more likely actively harmful. There's an old legal saying that "good cases make bad law." That is, when we try to achieve a just result in a particular case, we end up with a law that may serve that end well, but ultimately creates more problems than it solves.
This goes double when the law concerns technology. The tech world is noted for the rapidity with which is advances; the legal world is noted for its resistance to change and advancement. When the latter regulates the former, it will inevitably lead to a stifling of future development. Definitions and phraseology become hyper-critical. For example, let's look at "spyware." How do you define it? What would you call a program that quietly looks at everything you type, taking note of some words as being particularly interesting? I'd call it a spellchecker. How about a daemon that goes through your e-mail and reports back to an agent information about how many e-mails you get from a particular sender, what kind of things you talk about, etc.? I'd call it an adaptive mail filter (Bayesian or similar). How about a webmail service that looks at your e-mail, analyzes it, and uses that analysis to present advertisements relevant to you? I think the term for that is Gmail.
Yes, these examples are contrived; I deliberately chose them to demonstrate a point. I'm trying to show that even the best-intentioned law can have dramatic effects down the line, effects that we can't even begin to predict. There's another truism in law that if the case goes to court, the lawyers have already failed. The principle holds true here as well: if the Legislature gets involved, there are no winners, only losers.
the "gay agenda" (whatever *that* is)
Well, you're in luck; I just happen to have a copy: The Homosexual Agenda
If you have a material that contains a mixture of Plutonium and U238 and U235, you can extract the individual elements through certain processes.
I believe the OP meant that the plutonium could be extracted and reused as fuel. U235 can be extracted from a mixture of various isotopes of uranium, but doing so is difficult and expensive.
Uranium, chemically speaking, is uranium, regardless of the isotope. Remember, atomic number (and element, really) is based upon the number of protons. Isotopes differ only in the number of neutrons present; they have different masses, but are chemically identical. As such, various isotopes cannot be separated by chemical means, making separation very difficult. The best ways to separate isotopes are through diffusion, or through centrifuges. Due to, among other things, the trivial difference (less than two percent) in mass between the fissionable and non-fissionable, this process is not particularly efficient, and thus extremely expensive. Extremely expensive means that great resources are required, limiting access to the process.
The point is that while the waste can be separated, it is highly impractical for anybody but national governments of profitable countries. Stealing the material and reprocessing is a risk so close to zero as to be irrelevant.
And second (or even third) GPS receivers, and sextants, and compasses, and maps, and speed indicators, and stopwatches, and . . . .
but this is a lives-at-stake situation
Yes, but only the lives of dumb people. Smart people have backups.
If your family makes less than $40,000, you have zero expected contribution to tuition, less than $60,000 a substantially reduced contribution.
So, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need, then?
...it seems to me that, as a concerned citizen, I have an existing business relationship with my government.
What's this clown's number again?
Abu Ghraib Photo's
Perhaps people who understand that the plural of "photo" doesn't have an apostrophe will have better luck.
I've personally spent the last 6 months looking for work, I've had my resume tuned, I have 25 years of technical experience, and I've made it clear I'll do almost anything, and I have not had a single interview. I'm not alone, I have a couple hundred friends and acquaintances who've been unemployed for between 2 and 3.5 years.
And, at the same time, I'm twenty-three years old, haven't graduated from college yet, and had two jobs come looking for me in the past two years. Not to mention the raise I got last month.
Perhaps you need to consider upgrading your skillset, or possibly upgrading your attitude.
If you're not smart enough to capitalize your sentences and "I", or to be consistent
And if you're not smart enough to put the comma inside the quotation marks, where it belongs...ah, to heck with it. Next!
Putting a percentage bounty on things makes for a dumb law. Instead of encouraging whistleblowing at an early date (when less damage has been done), it encourages delaying the whistleblowing as long as possible to rake in the best rewards.
Except that there's competition here, too. If I know that Foomatic, Inc. is committing fraud, and I can get 10% of the proceeds of a fraud suit, then I have an incentive to wait. However, if you and I both know, then we both have an incentive to wait, in the form of a bigger payoff, but we also have an incentive to report early, in the form of each other: if you bring suit before I do, I get nothing. Therefore, it's in my best interest to file the suit as soon as I have a solid case; if you beat me to the punch, I'm left out in the cold.
It also raises the possibility of us colluding to delay, but the expected payout would have to at least double in value for that to be worthwhile, and there's the additional problem of the Prisoner's Dilemma. On top of that, even if we collude, this isn't a closed system. We both know, but if we know, who's to say that Marilyn, down in Accounting, doesn't, and isn't prepping her own suit, to beat us both to the punch?
There is an encouragement to wait until a solid case exists, though; bringing the suit early will result in a negative outcome (losing the case, plus lawyer's fees). This is a good thing, as it protects the innocent, and also encourages good cases against the guilty, preventing them from being warned off by a premature filing.
Still, for the kind of money that is involved, who wants another job? There's a lot of surf needs riding.
For the record, both Jim and Bev have pledged to use the proceeds from the suit to further their civil rights causes.
Jim March broke the news last night over on The High Road; I submitted the story last night, but was rejected. Anyhow, follow the link, and you can read Jim's commentary, and discuss the case with him (he's a senior member and very active participant over at THR). All sorts of little tidbits over there--the suit has been in the works since November, but a gag order was just lifted yesterday. Somebody else mentioned that the plaintiffs get a 30% bounty on the damages, or 20% if the state provides legal assistance (that should be 15%, not 20%, BTW). He also discusses the basis for the fraud suit, and the somewhat unique method (Qui Tam) they've chosen to fight Diebold; he likens it to the tax evasion case against Al Capone. Definitely a good, lively discussion over there; well worth a read.
From the article: Whether or not you do, US-CERT advises increasing your Internet Explorer security settings, per Microsoft's instructions. (Alas, the higher setting disables parts of Slate's interface.)
Sorry, you seem to have misspelled "Alas, the higher setting highlights Slate's use of insecure and nonstandard features." You might want to have that keyboard checked.
Strange, no?
Well, no, not really; no good pilot would do without...
Hey! That wasn't nice!
...would dare take off without his trusty West Bend timer! (Picture at http://sd-mirror.dumitru.com/scaled/sso042a.sized. jpg)
West Bend timers...IN SPACE!
(Yes, I know that's actually White Knight's cockpit. Smile and nod.)
I've read slashdot since 1997 for the interesting tech stories. In that time it's become, politically, too much of an echo chamber. Hardly a substantial exchange of views. I know politics isn't the primary bailiwick of the site, but one might expect more fromk seemingly intelligent readers.
I don't presume to speak for others, but as for myself, I generally just stay out of policital arguments on Slashdot (and most other places) unless I can add something, like solid fact from a neutral source. Anything else, and I'm just getting into a flamewar. Nobody gets convinced, it just annoys the pig, or something like that. Anyhow, when one side talks, and the other ignores the first, it does tend to sound one-sided.
#2. All DNA samples take from #1 are to be PURGED COMPLETELY from any databases after 30 days.
You mean, just like the database of people submitting to a background check for purchase of a firearm was purged (search for "Texas"), as requred by law? Yeah, I trust my government to scrub the database like it says it will.
Say, did I hear something about a bridge for sale?
I'm sure the maintainence people have a whole list of procedures to follow when servicing anywhere near the blance [sic] weights.
Yup. Don't drill holes in the things, then snort the dust. Always a sensible precaution.
Other than that, no, not really. DU is inert; it's considered safe. Hell, COSI, a science museum in Columbus, OH, has a slug of the stuff, right next to a slug of lead, and a few others, for demonstrating density.
Note: I work on airplanes. Right now, an A-26 invader. The counterweights for that aircraft are lead, but we use the same precautions. The head mechanic on the project flies A300's for UPS, and has been a mechanic for many years, including in the military.
You are not being held accountable solely for what you think or feel, but how you express such feelings.
True, to a point. "Hate crime" laws prescribe an additional penalty for an action based upon the victim's membership in a protected class. Ergo, if I go out and beat the stuffing out of a white guy, I go to prison for a year; if I go beat up a black guy in exactly the same way, I go to prison for a year, plus another year for the "hate crime." Such laws criminalize thought; they add an additional penalty not based on the damage actually inflicted upon the victim, but based on the thoughts and feelings of the aggressor toward the victim. In that way, they actually discriminate against those not in the protected classes, depriving them of their right to "equal protection of the laws" (14th Amendment); in this case, they are less protected that the "victim" classes.
In reality, such equal protection is even further eroded by the fact that white-on-black (or other minority) violence is usually prosecuted with the additional "hate crime" charge, but minority-on-white violence is rarely prosecuted that way, even when the aggressor minority demonstrates his "hateful" intent. Equal protection indeed. In any case, these laws amount to little more than thoughtcrime; punish the act, not the thought.
Hint: in most places, killing someone in self-defense is only legal if you had good reason to believe that your own life was in danger.
Hint: in most places, having a gun pointed at you is good reason to believe that your life is in danger.
Why would a (I presume) for-profit corporation like ICANN be preferable to a system controlled by governments?
If you don't like what the corporation is doing, you can stop paying. Try that with government.
Let's see here...
Yeah, I've done all right for myself.
Bomb-grade plutonium is almost pure Pu239 which is made by U238 capturing a neutron.
Essentially correct; you didn't mention the double beta decay, but that's essentially a given, considering the instability of Uranium 239 and Neptunium 239.
However, Chernobyl was a new reactor with relatively good safety equipment and excellent reliability. It was just misused.
Enh...not so much. Yes, Chernobyl was a new facility; that said, it didn't have a good safety record. RMBK 1000 reactors all over the Soviet Union had problems, but the KGB clamped down on that information; it is only recently that such information has come to light. In fact, Chernobyl 1 had problems to the now-famous Chernobyl 4, but not so severe; the KGB moved in and hushed things up so quickly and efficiently that even the other Chernobyl reactor operators didn't know about the problem. With such a closed, secretive attitude toward reactor safety, it was inevitable that mistakes would be repeated, and, indeed, they were. The only reason Chernobyl 4 became well-known is that the radiation cloud moved into western Europe, where people started raising questions. In any case, the safety issues with the RMBK-1000 reactors were serious, and known (if only to some) even at Chernobyl.