I'm blowing seven mod points I've already handed out on this story doing this, but meh, who cares. Pointing out someone has no idea what they're talking about is worth it. Sending the most lawyers has nothing to do with legal precedence. Lawyers can't influence legal precedence any more than any other person in the country. I'm not sure why you even care about legal precedence - it's not usually a very controversial subject. It's just how things are.
A court has precedence because courts are set up in a hierarchy by the legislature.
Some types of law have precedence over others, for instance the constitution over statute and statute over regulation.
Of course, they may want to send lawyers because of things called legal precedents. It's something different. Go look it up.
And no, natural gas is not a "chemical compound consisting of multiple elements". And yes, it seems very likely that you either failed chemistry or should have.
Natural gas is a gas mixture of various substances. Some are compounds, such as methane and propane, and some are not, such as elemental helium.
No, if you think extracting helium from natural gas is the same as extracting hydrogen and oxygen from water then I'm pretty much with the AC on this one.
You would think there is a business opportunity here - given enough cash, you could buy out the government's stake in the helium reserve and become a monopoly supplier overnight...
You answered your own question; low grade helium has been mixed with air (or other gases). Not to make it cheaper; it is usually a waste product from other helium uses (and so it *is* cheaper than refined helium, but that's not the point).
And of course separation is possible, but it's more expensive than buying already-refined helium. This is because the US government has a large reserve of refined helium that it has been selling below cost for many years now, distorting the market.
It means it is mixed with other stuff that's difficult enough to separate out that it's cheaper to buy new refined hydrogen than to refine the 'low grade helium'.
It can be mixed with something else. Water isn't chemically degraded when it's mixed into sewage, either, but you don't go drinking it. You need to separate it first - or just drink other water that's already pure, since it's cheaper to do that than to purify sewage. This is exactly what is happening in the helium market.
Sort of. The US government paid for a lot of helium to be extracted from natural gas and has been sitting on a big reserve for a long time. For a decade or so now they have been selling it below cost to encourage science applications etc. So the cost of extracting from natural gas is above the current 'market' price of scientific helium - but only because the 'market' is a single seller who is selling below cost.
What will happen when that reserve is exhausted is uncertain. The price of helium will rise, but it's not clear how much. Probably quite a lot at first, but it will probably also settle down as new producers come online.
Exactly. The Surface 2 starts at £359, the Surface 2 Pro at an eye-watering £719. If you want the one with 512GB of storage you are looking at one thousand four hundred and thirty-nine pounds, know to the rest of the world as a f!cking big wadge of cash. When did you last spend that kind of cash on a PC? I didn't spend that much on my last car.
Microsoft doesn't just mistakenly think consumers are interested in those features, they also mistakenly think people will pay between three and twelve times as much to get them.
It looks great. But I don't see how it's $750 better than a Hudl. Or $450 better than a Galaxy Tab 2 10.1. Actually I struggle to even name another tablet that costs more than half as much as a Surface Pro.
Yep. Microsoft doesn't understand the consumer market. The consumer wants to browse the web, watch films, listen to music, email, facebook and play games. If Microsoft wants to sell a £359 tablet, they need to make the case to consumers that their tablet is £300 better at those things than the tablet Tesco announced this week. For the Tesco customer with some clubcard points kicking around in their pocket, that 7" tablet will set them back £60 and do everything they want.
It has a bigger screen and an attachable keyboard, but your average consumer says, "So what?" In fact, for all the things listed above, I don't think £60 tablet makers are making the case; how does a tablet do them any better than my smartphone? And if someone making a £60 tablet is struggling to make a case to customers, then someone making a £359 tablet has big problems.
Exactly what I'm thinking. Also, 120V per metre? Really? So the potential difference between my head and my feet is roughly the same as a wall socket? Okay, one is DC and the other is AC, but still, this should mean that if I put a meter into DC voltage mode and hold one probe up and the other down I should measure hundreds of volts, right?
I don't think anyone outside fruitcake-land (though God knows there are enough of them) seriously thought that Syria didn't have chemical weapons. What has been the subject of ferocious debate is whether Syria has used chemical weapons.
So far the evidence is unclear, IMO. There have been six alleged incidents. Five of them were relatively small and not very well documented and it would be very hard to say from the direct evidence presented who carried out the attacks, if they happened at all.
The sixth attack, in Ghouta, on 21 August, is rather a different matter. Video footage which can be fairly reliably linked to the attack shows a large scale rocket attack, hundreds of dead and injured people and the attack definitely happened in the course of a Syrian Army attack. So either someone sneaked into the Syrian Army lines with a rocket launcher (more likely a number of them) and fired a series of rockets into the same area the army was already bombarding, or the rockets were launched by the Syrian Army.
The first theory is not entirely incredible. The fighting seems to have been in urban areas with lots of civilians around, so it would perhaps be possible, with a bit of luck and a lot of planning, to get the necessary equipment to the right place for a rebel group to launch this sort of attack. The usual objection to this sort of 'false flag' attack is that it involves a group attacking their own people, but this is not necessarily the case in Syria - the rebels are very disparate and some groups probably hate each other as much as they hate the government. The motive could even be simple revenge on another rebel group, though if that were the case then it seems unlikely that they would try to make the army look responsible.
All in all, it seems pretty likely that the attack at Ghouta, at least, was real and was carried out by the Syrian Army. But how anyone can "know" the truth of that in this situation is beyond me.
Where do I start a petition to raise the IQ and kernel knowledge of people? Guys, go read drivers/char/random.c. Then, learn about cryptography. Finally, come back here and admit to the world that you were wrong. Short answer: we actually know what we are doing. You don't. Long answer: we use rdrand as _one_ of many inputs into the random pool, and we use it as a way to _improve_ that random pool. So even if rdrand were to be back-doored by the NSA, our use of rdrand actually improves the quality of the random numbers you get from/dev/random. Really short answer: you're ignorant.
Linus is not usually my cup of tea, and the sprinkling of personal attacks doesn't help his case. But it's a reasonable explanation of why/dev/random works the way it does and why it won't be changed.
That's right. Everyone in Germany called Schmidt shares a parent, everyone from Wales called Jones shares a parent and everyone in the USA called Johnson shares a parent. It's the same phenomenon.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm blowing seven mod points I've already handed out on this story doing this, but meh, who cares. Pointing out someone has no idea what they're talking about is worth it. Sending the most lawyers has nothing to do with legal precedence. Lawyers can't influence legal precedence any more than any other person in the country. I'm not sure why you even care about legal precedence - it's not usually a very controversial subject. It's just how things are.
A court has precedence because courts are set up in a hierarchy by the legislature.
Some types of law have precedence over others, for instance the constitution over statute and statute over regulation.
Of course, they may want to send lawyers because of things called legal precedents. It's something different. Go look it up.
Fair enough.
And no, natural gas is not a "chemical compound consisting of multiple elements". And yes, it seems very likely that you either failed chemistry or should have.
Natural gas is a gas mixture of various substances. Some are compounds, such as methane and propane, and some are not, such as elemental helium.
No, if you think extracting helium from natural gas is the same as extracting hydrogen and oxygen from water then I'm pretty much with the AC on this one.
You would think there is a business opportunity here - given enough cash, you could buy out the government's stake in the helium reserve and become a monopoly supplier overnight...
You answered your own question; low grade helium has been mixed with air (or other gases). Not to make it cheaper; it is usually a waste product from other helium uses (and so it *is* cheaper than refined helium, but that's not the point).
And of course separation is possible, but it's more expensive than buying already-refined helium. This is because the US government has a large reserve of refined helium that it has been selling below cost for many years now, distorting the market.
It means it is mixed with other stuff that's difficult enough to separate out that it's cheaper to buy new refined hydrogen than to refine the 'low grade helium'.
It can be mixed with something else. Water isn't chemically degraded when it's mixed into sewage, either, but you don't go drinking it. You need to separate it first - or just drink other water that's already pure, since it's cheaper to do that than to purify sewage. This is exactly what is happening in the helium market.
Sort of. The US government paid for a lot of helium to be extracted from natural gas and has been sitting on a big reserve for a long time. For a decade or so now they have been selling it below cost to encourage science applications etc. So the cost of extracting from natural gas is above the current 'market' price of scientific helium - but only because the 'market' is a single seller who is selling below cost.
What will happen when that reserve is exhausted is uncertain. The price of helium will rise, but it's not clear how much. Probably quite a lot at first, but it will probably also settle down as new producers come online.
Other inert gases like, say, Nitrogen?
Exactly. The Surface 2 starts at £359, the Surface 2 Pro at an eye-watering £719. If you want the one with 512GB of storage you are looking at one thousand four hundred and thirty-nine pounds, know to the rest of the world as a f!cking big wadge of cash. When did you last spend that kind of cash on a PC? I didn't spend that much on my last car.
Microsoft doesn't just mistakenly think consumers are interested in those features, they also mistakenly think people will pay between three and twelve times as much to get them.
It looks great. But I don't see how it's $750 better than a Hudl. Or $450 better than a Galaxy Tab 2 10.1. Actually I struggle to even name another tablet that costs more than half as much as a Surface Pro.
Yep. Microsoft doesn't understand the consumer market. The consumer wants to browse the web, watch films, listen to music, email, facebook and play games. If Microsoft wants to sell a £359 tablet, they need to make the case to consumers that their tablet is £300 better at those things than the tablet Tesco announced this week. For the Tesco customer with some clubcard points kicking around in their pocket, that 7" tablet will set them back £60 and do everything they want.
It has a bigger screen and an attachable keyboard, but your average consumer says, "So what?" In fact, for all the things listed above, I don't think £60 tablet makers are making the case; how does a tablet do them any better than my smartphone? And if someone making a £60 tablet is struggling to make a case to customers, then someone making a £359 tablet has big problems.
And the Democrat strategy. If public spending doesn't fix the economy, increase public spending.
Funnily enough, I live in the sane bit of the world, yes.
Exactly what I'm thinking. Also, 120V per metre? Really? So the potential difference between my head and my feet is roughly the same as a wall socket? Okay, one is DC and the other is AC, but still, this should mean that if I put a meter into DC voltage mode and hold one probe up and the other down I should measure hundreds of volts, right?
Sense of humour fail?
It's not like they're further from the sun. So why not grow it using sunlight?
Oh, someone PLEASE mod this up.
It's interesting to see the widespread sense-of-humour fail on /. this afternoon.
I don't think anyone outside fruitcake-land (though God knows there are enough of them) seriously thought that Syria didn't have chemical weapons. What has been the subject of ferocious debate is whether Syria has used chemical weapons.
So far the evidence is unclear, IMO. There have been six alleged incidents. Five of them were relatively small and not very well documented and it would be very hard to say from the direct evidence presented who carried out the attacks, if they happened at all.
The sixth attack, in Ghouta, on 21 August, is rather a different matter. Video footage which can be fairly reliably linked to the attack shows a large scale rocket attack, hundreds of dead and injured people and the attack definitely happened in the course of a Syrian Army attack. So either someone sneaked into the Syrian Army lines with a rocket launcher (more likely a number of them) and fired a series of rockets into the same area the army was already bombarding, or the rockets were launched by the Syrian Army.
The first theory is not entirely incredible. The fighting seems to have been in urban areas with lots of civilians around, so it would perhaps be possible, with a bit of luck and a lot of planning, to get the necessary equipment to the right place for a rebel group to launch this sort of attack. The usual objection to this sort of 'false flag' attack is that it involves a group attacking their own people, but this is not necessarily the case in Syria - the rebels are very disparate and some groups probably hate each other as much as they hate the government. The motive could even be simple revenge on another rebel group, though if that were the case then it seems unlikely that they would try to make the army look responsible.
All in all, it seems pretty likely that the attack at Ghouta, at least, was real and was carried out by the Syrian Army. But how anyone can "know" the truth of that in this situation is beyond me.
Here's what he wrote:
Linus is not usually my cup of tea, and the sprinkling of personal attacks doesn't help his case. But it's a reasonable explanation of why /dev/random works the way it does and why it won't be changed.
That's right. Everyone in Germany called Schmidt shares a parent, everyone from Wales called Jones shares a parent and everyone in the USA called Johnson shares a parent. It's the same phenomenon.
But what if the sun-dwellers saw the comet coming?
No, but when the article title explicitly connects it to Ramadan, it would be useful to know he's Hindu.