Democrats especially are worried about Republicans hacking the digital voting systems.
Republicans especially are worried about votes by ineligible voters (such as illegal immigrants and felons), multiple voting, and fake voters.
Of course if there IS such corruption, neither side wants to unilaterally disarm. But perhaps a simultaneous disarmament would work.
Would you support a compromise bill like this?
For all federal elections:
1: Electronic voting machines must produce a paper trail, printing a voted ballot that is both human and machine readable, delivered to the voter for confirmation then to be placed in a ballot box. They MAY count votes too, for a quick unofficial result. But the paper ballot is the official ballot, available for recounts, etc.
2: A national voter identification system is instituted, to insure that each voter is actually alive, legally eligible to vote, and votes no more than once.
- Voter elegibility is confirmed upon initial registration and periodically thereafter (which can be done by showing up to vote and presenting ID).
- The identity and elegibility of absentee voters are also confirmed in person periodically thereafter (and their registration suspended if they are not confirmed).
- Identity and elegibility of all currently registered voters will be confirmed within a prescribed time period (no more than four years) after passage, and those not confirmed will be purged. Voters subject to this will be notified of this reregistration requirement in the mailed election paperwork and at polling places when voting in person. Procedures to reregister under the new rules will be no more difficult than initially registering a new voter under the new rules. Timely assistance will be provided for the handicapped.
- Any voter at a polling may be challenged (by an election worker, poll watcher, or anyone present) to provide his voter identification information, and will be denied a ballot if unable to produce it. Such challenge may not be construed as intimidation or racial discrimination.
- After the passage of the bill, any non-citizen who commits fraud while attempting to register to vote, actually registering to vote, attempting to vote, or actually voting, in a state where such non-citizen voting is not legal, is permanently barred from naturalization. States are presumed to bar voting by non-citizens unless they have explicitly authorized it.
- (Suitable language to bar use of the voter ID for any other purpose, interception and arrest or tracking of persons on their way to or from voting, punishing or tracking inelegible voters who attempt to register but do NOT do so fraudulently, etc.)
Seems to me such a bill would be a win all around (except perhaps for any REALLY corrupt and successful machine politicians, and those concerned about a "national ID card".): The honest on both sides would support it, of course, since THEY have less to lose than to gain. The dishonest could save face by claiming to be honest, while obtaining some assurance that the unknown amount of corruption they believe their opponents are perpetrating would be suppressed as they give up their own, known, amount.
Again I say to the teeming masses of Slashdot: lever machines are the answer! They have been proven for almost 90 years!
And have been hacked for much of that time.
One hack consists of the election officials that set up the machine presetting the wheels for the guy you want to win to some additional number, and (if you think there will be a lot of votes) the guy you want to lose to the nines compliment of the number, then weakly gluing stickers with zeros on them over the counter wheels and locking the inner door.
The poll watchers see the zeros and lock the outer door. First vote for each candidate knocks the stickers off, and they fall to the bottom of the machine. (If no votes for the candidate, the sticker remains visible saying "0000".) You send one of your own guys in to make sure your guy gets at least one vote if necessary.
The outer door is unlocked and the numbers read. The inner door remains locked until opportunity for recount is over. The inner door is only unsealed and opened (probably by your guy WITHOUT poll watchers) when it's time to do maintainence and set it up for the next election, at which point he can sweep out the stickers.
Downside: If your guy dies, is fired, or moves on, or misses a sticker that gets caught in the guts of the machine, the fact that the scam had been used might be discovered by some opposition functionary (or honest worker) at a later time. Such stickers HAVE been discovered in lever-type voting machines.
For those who aren't aware, Ken Thompson admitted to actually writing and installing a back door in the unix login program and the associated C compiler, as described in his 1983 Turing Award lecture.
This worked by having the compiler recognize what it's compiling and:
- If compiling login, insert the back door.
- If compiling a later version of itself, insert the compiler patch. This has the advantage that, once you get it working, you can throw out the source code and it still propagates.
1968 was the Democratic Convention riots, IIRC. (which, quite obviously, maybe I don't)
And the riots in question were largely over the Democrats rigging the process for nominating the Democratic presidential candidate.
- Johnson was discredited due to his escalation of the Vietnam adventure, and had already announced he wasn't going to run for reelection.
- McCarthy was the initial favorite of the antiwar crowd - which was much of the population by then.
- But Robert Kennedy entered the race, and was considered anti-war and "more electable". So he won a lot of votes.
- Then he was assasinated on his way to his victory speech (after winning the enormous CA delegation, if I recall right).
- Johnson used the party machinery to assign the Kennedy votes to his VP, Hubert Humphrey, rather than to McCarthy - and had the convention held in Chicago to keep it under the thumb of his crony, Richard J. Daily (the operator of one of the most corrupt city politcal machines in history, surpassing even Tammany Hall in corruption, effectiveness, and reputation).
- A large part of the point of the demonstrations was to try to convince the Kennedy delegates to vote for McCarthy instead.
- And the riots resulted from Daily's attempts to suppress the demonstrations and news coverage of them.
(I was there. You'll find me on the front page of one issue of the Chicago Sun's coverage of the demonstrations.)
Pity the immediate illness was so severe. Now they have to find someone already needing bone marrow, that's also willing to risk looking like the michelin man.
The swelling and such are a side-effect of the massive immune activation. It should be trivial to block that with a number of well-known agents.
Worse than this, I suspect it could be a quite potent bio-warfare agent if someone was sadistic enough to use it.
It's an antibody. That's a honking big double-molecule. The only way to get it into the bloodstream in an effective form is to inject it.
This makes it pretty useless for biowar. If you can inject enough of this to kill off somebody's immune system you can inject much tinier amounts of a number of agents with more immediate and fatal or debilitating effects.
Now, what are the moral grounds for cloning the patients and stealing the bone marrow from the foetus? It seems likely to be the only way to fix the problem permanantly, but I cant see the christians liking it.
Huh? Where'd you get the idea you need a clone or foetal stem cells?
You can reconstitute an adult's immune system from at least two sources:
- Donor bone marrow cells from another adult who is a close match immunologically. (Basically drill a hole in the donor's femur under anesthesia and suck some out - then inject them into the patient.) The patient may need to take anti-rejection drugs afterward if the match was too far off.
- Blood salvaged from the umbilical cord of a newborn baby. (This would normally be thrown out, unless the parents are among the few that have it salvaged and frozen in case the baby ever needs his immune system reconstituted.) Inject that and it forms a new immune system matched to the patient - just as the same cells in the part of the blood in the baby make the baby's immune system after it's born (and is no longer in contact with the mother's blood, which would screw the prcess up). This requires much less tissue matching - mostly blood type, to prevent the mother's antibodies (present in the baby's blood) from clotting the patient's bloodstream shortly after the injection.
Then they'd have a new drug that conveniently knocks out the immune system preperatory to bone marrow transplants so that radiation treatments to zap the old bone marrow is no longer needed.
And can you IMAGINE the problems getting test subjects for such a drug WITHOUT this accident?
Did this just knock out PART of the immune system, or all of it?
If it got the whole thing the company could just hunt up compatible donors and give them bone marrow transplants - or give them cord-blood transplatns - and essentially cure them. Then they'd have a new drug that conveniently knocks out the immune system preperatory to bone marrow transplants so that radiation treatments to zap the old bone marrow is no longer needed.
If it DIDN'T get the whole thing they could still zap the bone marrow and go the normal route.
Meanwhile, either way, the victims become valuable research subjects: Pay 'em a decent wage and do the work. Good all around.
Customs is not police, searching for evidence of a crime.
Customs is treasury department border guards.
They're not accusing you of a crime. They're just checking that your taxes are paid and you're not bringing in prohibited items.
They don't need a warrant. They don't need probable cause. They get to check without suspicion.
And if they happen to find evidence of a crime during their search, they get to file charges, just like any other official who happened to see evidence of a crime while performing their normal duties.
A similar process occurs with respect to left-wing politics on campus. (Or at least it did when I was there. These days it might be right-wing politics. B-) )
There are actually competing power distribution networks, with diversely routed feeders?
Back in the '70s I worked right next to Comshare in Ann Arbor. They had located on the outskirts of town at the boundary between two major portions of the power grid, specifically so they could get feed from both parts of it (in addition to their backup generators that could tide them over if both parts went down simultaneously.
I'm not sure if the two feeds both came from Detroit Edison or if one was from Consolidated Edison. But I do note that the Detroit/Con Ed intetie control facility was a mile or two up the road (dug into the top of the highest hill in the county, so their microwave backup comm links got good line-of-sight).
Yes, but there are more defendants than just this guy. Why is HE newsworthy?
Because his arrest initially looked like it was related to the presentation he was about to give on privacy (or lack thereof) vs. databases, which it aborted.
The circumstances had looked like government suppression of information ralated to privacy, identity theft, whistle-blowing about potential database misuse, and several other bits of "stuff that matters" to nerds.
So the revalation that the government was (apparently) only busting him for some other claimed misbehavior, and was (apparently) NOT trying to block his presentation but only using it as a means to locate him for caputre, is itself "news for nerds, stuff that matters".
Let me clue you into something. Some random asshat on slashdot is likely not his judge. So who cares what they think.
Now I'll clue YOU into something: That's not the issue.
Besides i don't see you liberal hippies clamouring over all the persecuted blacks and other minorities. Oh, yeah, Carlin was right, we only save the cute ones [paraphrasing].
Just as you see the NRA coming to the defense of black people when the government is trying to disarm them, you'll see the Slashdot crowd coming to the defense of "persecuted blacks and other minorities" when technology is what is being used to persecute them. (Think about the reaction here to "The Great Firewall of China" and its use against the Falun Gong, pro-democracy activists, and other net users in China.)
And just as the NRA doesn't spend its resources trying to help feed the hungry in Africa (except, perhaps, when they're hungry because they were disarmed and their food diverted or hunting prevented), because it's not the NRA's issue and would be a misuse of its resources, generic oppression of minorities is not a specific issue for nerds unless there is some tie-in to technologg. (Like "the digital divide", for instance. Or racial discrimination in technology education and hiring.)
Plenty of Slashdot posters are also working to end persecution of other forms. I personally know a number of them who are actually activists on the subject. But they aren't wasting their time being activists about it HERE, where it's off topic. There are plenty of other places where their efforts are more valuable - and plenty of valuable stuff to be done here, on other subjects.
Sure we have to use a more critical eye with blogs than we do with say, the NYT,...
Given recent experience with reporting by major media outlets, including especially the NYT (along with CBS and NBC), I'd say that one must use AT LEAST as much, if not more, of a critical eye on such major media outlets as one does on a blog by a "worker or enthusiastic hobbiest" in the relavant field.
The major media's track record is abysmal: Agenda-driven bias, lack of fact-checking and outright fabrication, failure of administrative mechanisms to keep employees conforming to standards of honesty and objectivity. Worst of all are their attempts to influence politics by distorted reporting - something that they occasionally even admit to, or even brag about.
It's like explaining how bees fly-- there's a lot to the science which is still just guesswork and lab experiments.
The problem with explaining how bumblebees fly was that the wrong model was applied. They tried to analyze a bumblebee as if it were a fixed-wing glider (or a helicopter - which is mainly a fixed wing aircraft flying in cricles) and discovered that it would drop like a rock.
Which it will if it stops flapping.
Took a while to figure out that they create a vortex with one part of the flap, then use it to create lift with another. But they've pretty much got it down solid at this point - and are building tiny flapping flying machines using the same principle that perform about as analysis predicts.
Of course the same is no doubt happening all over medicine. So your analogy is right on (even if the example is a bit dated).
We've potentially got World War III brewing in the Middle East but let's go ahead and spend some time discussing allofmp3.com. Jesus H. Christ on a bicycle the world has it's priorities screwed up.
Oh, dear. We have another crisis in the Middle East that might lead to WW III. Again.
Let's drop everything else, run around in circles, and freeze and starve in the dark.
Stop the World, I Want to get OFF!
Baloney.
There are enough bureaucrats, politicians, legislative staffers, corporate executives, military and police officers, ambassadors, and other officials to handle war, anti-poverty and development uplift programs, economic aid, law enforcement, legislation, food production, and the latest maybe-here-comes-WW-III all at once. Most of them with authoirity in one of these speres have none in the others - and the ones that DO overlap are also in authority over so much that their specialty is really delegation.
The world isn't going to just stop unless, and until, something stops it. Maybe that will be WW III, currently getting starting over this latest Israel/other-guys shootout. Maybe not. Until it happens, the world is still running, so let's get on with it.
We have a significant issue here with G8, RIAA, and Allofmp3. Lets deal with it. (G8 and the RIAA are, after all.) This IS "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters."
Maybe you think WW III matters more? Go discuss it in an article where's it's on-topic. Complaints about people continuing to do their jobs despite yet another fracus that is somebody ELSE's job are OFF topic here.
The technology needed to repair or extract and transfer information from a current-tech preserved brain is far beyond (and a superset of) that needed to construct a new body from scratch.
Why would you want a used car when you could have a sparkly-fresh new one, with genuine new car smell? (Especially when the used one is somebody else's lemon. Why else would he be going into suspension?) Same with bodies, only moreso.
so any long-term freezer jockey will have to be pulled out and thawed every 50 to 100 years to allow his body to repair [radiation] damage, so as to prevent radiation sickness and possible cancers.
That is, unless the aforementioned nanotech advances happen and make it possible to fix radiation burns before thawing and find and repair/kill cancerous cells.
People frozen with current technology aren't likely to be revived just by thawing and restarting, without MAJOR repair on the cellular and molecular level. For starters, the brain tends to develop big cracks (though I hear they've gotten that mitigated recently).
Expectation is that reanimation of current patients will consist of constructing a new body, extracting the structure and memories of the old brain, and installing it in the new one.
Most cryonics patients opt for head-only, rather than whole-body, to improve preservation of the brain and its information during the cool-down process. (Also because it's much less expensive, since one dewar can hold a lot more heads than whole bodies). So even if reanimation and repair of the terminally diseased and preservation-damaged bodies become available, these "cool headed" folks will need new bodies anyhow.
Suspension technology is constantly improving, so those going in later will be in better shape. And there are some patients around who were frozen under pretty primitive conditions. Thus we figure cryonics will be a roughly first-in last-out operation.
Looks like a form of social cooperation. Bug with energy-supplying food but short on electron sink runs wire to bug with electron sink (like maybe more oxygen handy) but short on energy-supplying food. They split the energy. Both benefit.
Possible stepwise evolution: Leakage of electrons from surface of bug provides some electron sink. Growing a conductive whisker improves this. Reducing metal from compunds also sinks electrons - with a side effect of producing conductive metal for wire building.
Re:Editorial Oversight != Truth (i.e. FOX News)
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So America is actually hopelessly left-biased and right-wing stuff only appears fanatic because that's an oppressed minority that keeps getting ridiculed?
Nope.
The establishment media is hopelessly left-biased (as compared with the political center of the voting population according to an objective measure developed by researchers at Stanford and UCLA).
And FOX News (which comes out as only slightly right of the population on their measure - and that mainly because they use slightly more words in their quotes from right-wing think tanks) appears massively right-biased by contrast.
None of which says anything about the fanaticism of the positions reported. The point is just that the establishment media only reports the left-wing stuff, while FOX News reports both - about equally in number of items, slightly more than half on the right in number of words.
But how CONVENIENT for the left wing that the bulk of the media are so far to the left that they can discredit a network that gives their opponents' positions an airing AT ALL as being hopelessly right-wing - and get some people to actually BELIEVE it.
Re:Editorial Oversight != Truth (i.e. FOX News)
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What distinguishes Fox News is that, on average, people who watch it are roughly twice as likely to not know the actual facts, not partisan facts, but really basic stuff like the fact that Sadaam Hussein did not have a meaningful relationship with Al Quaeda.
A number of major figures in Sadam Husein's security aparatus have been documented to have had a relationship with Al Quaeda, and Sadam's regime has been documented to have had a program that paid pensions to the families of suicide bombers.
So claiming "Sadam Husein did not have a meaningful relationship with Al Quaeda" as one of the "actual facts, not partisan facts" that "FOX viewers are twice as likely to 'not know'" makes me suspicious of the "non-partisan fact list" and methodology of whatever study you're referring to.
Which brings us back to the subject of politicized bogus research and out-and-out lies on the establishment media - in contrast with both Wikipedia and FOX News. B-)
Re:Editorial Oversight != Truth (i.e. FOX News)
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Why does every issue necessarily have a "left" and "right" side?
Many issues have more than two sides. But most of the power is concentrated in two major camps - labeled "left" and "right". When there's a disagreement between them be ready for them to fight - and for you to be caught in the battle.
(Of course when they agree with each other and disagree with you, and the first dissent is a third-tier block, you're in deeper trouble.)
"Fair and balanced" frequently means only an obfuscation of facts. All it takes is one nutbar (on either side of the spectrum) to introduce "the other side". Fox will then dutifully report both sides with (according to their guiding soundbite) equal weight (at best, though typically skewed to the right in presentation). This is bogus.
And in the situation where the left and right agree and you don't, you're the "nutbar". Then pray that FOX is still around. It might give YOU a chance to be heard by other "nutbars" who could help. You certainly won't be on the establishment media's radar screen (unless they can find enough humor in ridiculing you to fill a vacant slot on a slow news day).
Is it impossible that there is accepted (evident, rational) truth, beyond politics?
It is possible.
But does it matter?
When the issue is who will run your life, you're in the realm of politics. It behoves you to understand the major power blocks - in advance - so you can be prepared to defend what you hold dear.
News is about recent and upcoming events that might affect your life. In a "civilized" region where most people are insulated from most natural hazards, the remaining hazards are primarily from human interaction. Those are all related to politics - either directly caused by politics or affected by the environment created by political decisions.
Slashdot Mirror
Democrats especially are worried about Republicans hacking the digital voting systems.
Republicans especially are worried about votes by ineligible voters (such as illegal immigrants and felons), multiple voting, and fake voters.
Of course if there IS such corruption, neither side wants to unilaterally disarm. But perhaps a simultaneous disarmament would work.
Would you support a compromise bill like this?
For all federal elections:
1: Electronic voting machines must produce a paper trail, printing a voted ballot that is both human and machine readable, delivered to the voter for confirmation then to be placed in a ballot box. They MAY count votes too, for a quick unofficial result. But the paper ballot is the official ballot, available for recounts, etc.
2: A national voter identification system is instituted, to insure that each voter is actually alive, legally eligible to vote, and votes no more than once.
- Voter elegibility is confirmed upon initial registration and periodically thereafter (which can be done by showing up to vote and presenting ID).
- The identity and elegibility of absentee voters are also confirmed in person periodically thereafter (and their registration suspended if they are not confirmed).
- Identity and elegibility of all currently registered voters will be confirmed within a prescribed time period (no more than four years) after passage, and those not confirmed will be purged. Voters subject to this will be notified of this reregistration requirement in the mailed election paperwork and at polling places when voting in person. Procedures to reregister under the new rules will be no more difficult than initially registering a new voter under the new rules. Timely assistance will be provided for the handicapped.
- Any voter at a polling may be challenged (by an election worker, poll watcher, or anyone present) to provide his voter identification information, and will be denied a ballot if unable to produce it. Such challenge may not be construed as intimidation or racial discrimination.
- After the passage of the bill, any non-citizen who commits fraud while attempting to register to vote, actually registering to vote, attempting to vote, or actually voting, in a state where such non-citizen voting is not legal, is permanently barred from naturalization. States are presumed to bar voting by non-citizens unless they have explicitly authorized it.
- (Suitable language to bar use of the voter ID for any other purpose, interception and arrest or tracking of persons on their way to or from voting, punishing or tracking inelegible voters who attempt to register but do NOT do so fraudulently, etc.)
Seems to me such a bill would be a win all around (except perhaps for any REALLY corrupt and successful machine politicians, and those concerned about a "national ID card".): The honest on both sides would support it, of course, since THEY have less to lose than to gain. The dishonest could save face by claiming to be honest, while obtaining some assurance that the unknown amount of corruption they believe their opponents are perpetrating would be suppressed as they give up their own, known, amount.
Again I say to the teeming masses of Slashdot: lever machines are the answer! They have been proven for almost 90 years!
And have been hacked for much of that time.
One hack consists of the election officials that set up the machine presetting the wheels for the guy you want to win to some additional number, and (if you think there will be a lot of votes) the guy you want to lose to the nines compliment of the number, then weakly gluing stickers with zeros on them over the counter wheels and locking the inner door.
The poll watchers see the zeros and lock the outer door. First vote for each candidate knocks the stickers off, and they fall to the bottom of the machine. (If no votes for the candidate, the sticker remains visible saying "0000".) You send one of your own guys in to make sure your guy gets at least one vote if necessary.
The outer door is unlocked and the numbers read. The inner door remains locked until opportunity for recount is over. The inner door is only unsealed and opened (probably by your guy WITHOUT poll watchers) when it's time to do maintainence and set it up for the next election, at which point he can sweep out the stickers.
Downside: If your guy dies, is fired, or moves on, or misses a sticker that gets caught in the guts of the machine, the fact that the scam had been used might be discovered by some opposition functionary (or honest worker) at a later time. Such stickers HAVE been discovered in lever-type voting machines.
Ken Thompson for President
I'd bet he would get plenty of votes!
ROTFL!
For those who aren't aware, Ken Thompson admitted to actually writing and installing a back door in the unix login program and the associated C compiler, as described in his 1983 Turing Award lecture.
This worked by having the compiler recognize what it's compiling and:
- If compiling login, insert the back door.
- If compiling a later version of itself, insert the compiler patch.
This has the advantage that, once you get it working, you can throw out the source code and it still propagates.
1968 was the Democratic Convention riots, IIRC. (which, quite obviously, maybe I don't)
And the riots in question were largely over the Democrats rigging the process for nominating the Democratic presidential candidate.
- Johnson was discredited due to his escalation of the Vietnam adventure, and had already announced he wasn't going to run for reelection.
- McCarthy was the initial favorite of the antiwar crowd - which was much of the population by then.
- But Robert Kennedy entered the race, and was considered anti-war and "more electable". So he won a lot of votes.
- Then he was assasinated on his way to his victory speech (after winning the enormous CA delegation, if I recall right).
- Johnson used the party machinery to assign the Kennedy votes to his VP, Hubert Humphrey, rather than to McCarthy - and had the convention held in Chicago to keep it under the thumb of his crony, Richard J. Daily (the operator of one of the most corrupt city politcal machines in history, surpassing even Tammany Hall in corruption, effectiveness, and reputation).
- A large part of the point of the demonstrations was to try to convince the Kennedy delegates to vote for McCarthy instead.
- And the riots resulted from Daily's attempts to suppress the demonstrations and news coverage of them.
(I was there. You'll find me on the front page of one issue of the Chicago Sun's coverage of the demonstrations.)
Pity the immediate illness was so severe. Now they have to find someone already needing bone marrow, that's also willing to risk looking like the michelin man.
The swelling and such are a side-effect of the massive immune activation. It should be trivial to block that with a number of well-known agents.
Worse than this, I suspect it could be a quite potent bio-warfare agent if someone was sadistic enough to use it.
It's an antibody. That's a honking big double-molecule. The only way to get it into the bloodstream in an effective form is to inject it.
This makes it pretty useless for biowar. If you can inject enough of this to kill off somebody's immune system you can inject much tinier amounts of a number of agents with more immediate and fatal or debilitating effects.
Now, what are the moral grounds for cloning the patients and stealing the bone marrow from the foetus? It seems likely to be the only way to fix the problem permanantly, but I cant see the christians liking it.
Huh? Where'd you get the idea you need a clone or foetal stem cells?
You can reconstitute an adult's immune system from at least two sources:
- Donor bone marrow cells from another adult who is a close match immunologically. (Basically drill a hole in the donor's femur under anesthesia and suck some out - then inject them into the patient.) The patient may need to take anti-rejection drugs afterward if the match was too far off.
- Blood salvaged from the umbilical cord of a newborn baby. (This would normally be thrown out, unless the parents are among the few that have it salvaged and frozen in case the baby ever needs his immune system reconstituted.) Inject that and it forms a new immune system matched to the patient - just as the same cells in the part of the blood in the baby make the baby's immune system after it's born (and is no longer in contact with the mother's blood, which would screw the prcess up). This requires much less tissue matching - mostly blood type, to prevent the mother's antibodies (present in the baby's blood) from clotting the patient's bloodstream shortly after the injection.
Then they'd have a new drug that conveniently knocks out the immune system preperatory to bone marrow transplants so that radiation treatments to zap the old bone marrow is no longer needed.
And can you IMAGINE the problems getting test subjects for such a drug WITHOUT this accident?
Did this just knock out PART of the immune system, or all of it?
If it got the whole thing the company could just hunt up compatible donors and give them bone marrow transplants - or give them cord-blood transplatns - and essentially cure them. Then they'd have a new drug that conveniently knocks out the immune system preperatory to bone marrow transplants so that radiation treatments to zap the old bone marrow is no longer needed.
If it DIDN'T get the whole thing they could still zap the bone marrow and go the normal route.
Meanwhile, either way, the victims become valuable research subjects: Pay 'em a decent wage and do the work. Good all around.
When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade.
Customs is not police, searching for evidence of a crime.
Customs is treasury department border guards.
They're not accusing you of a crime. They're just checking that your taxes are paid and you're not bringing in prohibited items.
They don't need a warrant. They don't need probable cause. They get to check without suspicion.
And if they happen to find evidence of a crime during their search, they get to file charges, just like any other official who happened to see evidence of a crime while performing their normal duties.
A similar process occurs with respect to left-wing politics on campus. (Or at least it did when I was there. These days it might be right-wing politics. B-) )
There are actually competing power distribution networks, with diversely routed feeders?
Back in the '70s I worked right next to Comshare in Ann Arbor. They had located on the outskirts of town at the boundary between two major portions of the power grid, specifically so they could get feed from both parts of it (in addition to their backup generators that could tide them over if both parts went down simultaneously.
I'm not sure if the two feeds both came from Detroit Edison or if one was from Consolidated Edison. But I do note that the Detroit/Con Ed intetie control facility was a mile or two up the road (dug into the top of the highest hill in the county, so their microwave backup comm links got good line-of-sight).
Yes, but there are more defendants than just this guy. Why is HE newsworthy?
Because his arrest initially looked like it was related to the presentation he was about to give on privacy (or lack thereof) vs. databases, which it aborted.
The circumstances had looked like government suppression of information ralated to privacy, identity theft, whistle-blowing about potential database misuse, and several other bits of "stuff that matters" to nerds.
So the revalation that the government was (apparently) only busting him for some other claimed misbehavior, and was (apparently) NOT trying to block his presentation but only using it as a means to locate him for caputre, is itself "news for nerds, stuff that matters".
Let me clue you into something. Some random asshat on slashdot is likely not his judge. So who cares what they think.
Now I'll clue YOU into something: That's not the issue.
Besides i don't see you liberal hippies clamouring over all the persecuted blacks and other minorities. Oh, yeah, Carlin was right, we only save the cute ones [paraphrasing].
Just as you see the NRA coming to the defense of black people when the government is trying to disarm them, you'll see the Slashdot crowd coming to the defense of "persecuted blacks and other minorities" when technology is what is being used to persecute them. (Think about the reaction here to "The Great Firewall of China" and its use against the Falun Gong, pro-democracy activists, and other net users in China.)
And just as the NRA doesn't spend its resources trying to help feed the hungry in Africa (except, perhaps, when they're hungry because they were disarmed and their food diverted or hunting prevented), because it's not the NRA's issue and would be a misuse of its resources, generic oppression of minorities is not a specific issue for nerds unless there is some tie-in to technologg. (Like "the digital divide", for instance. Or racial discrimination in technology education and hiring.)
Plenty of Slashdot posters are also working to end persecution of other forms. I personally know a number of them who are actually activists on the subject. But they aren't wasting their time being activists about it HERE, where it's off topic. There are plenty of other places where their efforts are more valuable - and plenty of valuable stuff to be done here, on other subjects.
Without PORN you wouldn't HAVE that much installed internet bandwidth.
The availability of porn on the 'net was a primary driving force behind its buildout and general-public adoption.
I agree with you on all point but one:
...
Sure we have to use a more critical eye with blogs than we do with say, the NYT,
Given recent experience with reporting by major media outlets, including especially the NYT (along with CBS and NBC), I'd say that one must use AT LEAST as much, if not more, of a critical eye on such major media outlets as one does on a blog by a "worker or enthusiastic hobbiest" in the relavant field.
The major media's track record is abysmal: Agenda-driven bias, lack of fact-checking and outright fabrication, failure of administrative mechanisms to keep employees conforming to standards of honesty and objectivity. Worst of all are their attempts to influence politics by distorted reporting - something that they occasionally even admit to, or even brag about.
I guess I'm stupid. I don't understand ...how terrorists threaten my freedom.
Ask Salmon Rushdie.
I'd suggest you ask Theo van Gogh. But you'd need a Ouiga board to get his answer.
It's like explaining how bees fly-- there's a lot to the science which is still just guesswork and lab experiments.
The problem with explaining how bumblebees fly was that the wrong model was applied. They tried to analyze a bumblebee as if it were a fixed-wing glider (or a helicopter - which is mainly a fixed wing aircraft flying in cricles) and discovered that it would drop like a rock.
Which it will if it stops flapping.
Took a while to figure out that they create a vortex with one part of the flap, then use it to create lift with another. But they've pretty much got it down solid at this point - and are building tiny flapping flying machines using the same principle that perform about as analysis predicts.
Of course the same is no doubt happening all over medicine. So your analogy is right on (even if the example is a bit dated).
We've potentially got World War III brewing in the Middle East but let's go ahead and spend some time discussing allofmp3.com. Jesus H. Christ on a bicycle the world has it's priorities screwed up.
Oh, dear. We have another crisis in the Middle East that might lead to WW III. Again.
Let's drop everything else, run around in circles, and freeze and starve in the dark.
Stop the World, I Want to get OFF!
Baloney.
There are enough bureaucrats, politicians, legislative staffers, corporate executives, military and police officers, ambassadors, and other officials to handle war, anti-poverty and development uplift programs, economic aid, law enforcement, legislation, food production, and the latest maybe-here-comes-WW-III all at once. Most of them with authoirity in one of these speres have none in the others - and the ones that DO overlap are also in authority over so much that their specialty is really delegation.
The world isn't going to just stop unless, and until, something stops it. Maybe that will be WW III, currently getting starting over this latest Israel/other-guys shootout. Maybe not. Until it happens, the world is still running, so let's get on with it.
We have a significant issue here with G8, RIAA, and Allofmp3. Lets deal with it. (G8 and the RIAA are, after all.) This IS "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters."
Maybe you think WW III matters more? Go discuss it in an article where's it's on-topic. Complaints about people continuing to do their jobs despite yet another fracus that is somebody ELSE's job are OFF topic here.
Hardly.
The technology needed to repair or extract and transfer information from a current-tech preserved brain is far beyond (and a superset of) that needed to construct a new body from scratch.
Why would you want a used car when you could have a sparkly-fresh new one, with genuine new car smell? (Especially when the used one is somebody else's lemon. Why else would he be going into suspension?) Same with bodies, only moreso.
so any long-term freezer jockey will have to be pulled out and thawed every 50 to 100 years to allow his body to repair [radiation] damage, so as to prevent radiation sickness and possible cancers.
That is, unless the aforementioned nanotech advances happen and make it possible to fix radiation burns before thawing and find and repair/kill cancerous cells.
People frozen with current technology aren't likely to be revived just by thawing and restarting, without MAJOR repair on the cellular and molecular level. For starters, the brain tends to develop big cracks (though I hear they've gotten that mitigated recently).
Expectation is that reanimation of current patients will consist of constructing a new body, extracting the structure and memories of the old brain, and installing it in the new one.
Most cryonics patients opt for head-only, rather than whole-body, to improve preservation of the brain and its information during the cool-down process. (Also because it's much less expensive, since one dewar can hold a lot more heads than whole bodies). So even if reanimation and repair of the terminally diseased and preservation-damaged bodies become available, these "cool headed" folks will need new bodies anyhow.
Suspension technology is constantly improving, so those going in later will be in better shape. And there are some patients around who were frozen under pretty primitive conditions. Thus we figure cryonics will be a roughly first-in last-out operation.
That's OK. We nut jobs will think of you, and sigh, when they thaw out our brains and install the memories in new bodies, some time far in the future.
And if they don't, we won't be any deader.
(Which reminds me: I'd better check that my Alcor dues are up to date. B-) )
I always wondered when multiple mice would be supported.
Ditto.
I've wanted two hands "behind the glass" for years. (Like since I got one fingertip/finger-thumb-pincher back there with the current paradigm.)
It's not VR yet. But two hands is much cloaer than one.
Mind you, how do you keep the screen clean of fingerprints and pizza grease smears.
Keep the cat out of the pizza.
Looks like a form of social cooperation. Bug with energy-supplying food but short on electron sink runs wire to bug with electron sink (like maybe more oxygen handy) but short on energy-supplying food. They split the energy. Both benefit.
Possible stepwise evolution: Leakage of electrons from surface of bug provides some electron sink. Growing a conductive whisker improves this. Reducing metal from compunds also sinks electrons - with a side effect of producing conductive metal for wire building.
So America is actually hopelessly left-biased and right-wing stuff only appears fanatic because that's an oppressed minority that keeps getting ridiculed?
Nope.
The establishment media is hopelessly left-biased (as compared with the political center of the voting population according to an objective measure developed by researchers at Stanford and UCLA).
And FOX News (which comes out as only slightly right of the population on their measure - and that mainly because they use slightly more words in their quotes from right-wing think tanks) appears massively right-biased by contrast.
None of which says anything about the fanaticism of the positions reported. The point is just that the establishment media only reports the left-wing stuff, while FOX News reports both - about equally in number of items, slightly more than half on the right in number of words.
But how CONVENIENT for the left wing that the bulk of the media are so far to the left that they can discredit a network that gives their opponents' positions an airing AT ALL as being hopelessly right-wing - and get some people to actually BELIEVE it.
What distinguishes Fox News is that, on average, people who watch it are roughly twice as likely to not know the actual facts, not partisan facts, but really basic stuff like the fact that Sadaam Hussein did not have a meaningful relationship with Al Quaeda.
A number of major figures in Sadam Husein's security aparatus have been documented to have had a relationship with Al Quaeda, and Sadam's regime has been documented to have had a program that paid pensions to the families of suicide bombers.
So claiming "Sadam Husein did not have a meaningful relationship with Al Quaeda" as one of the "actual facts, not partisan facts" that "FOX viewers are twice as likely to 'not know'" makes me suspicious of the "non-partisan fact list" and methodology of whatever study you're referring to.
Which brings us back to the subject of politicized bogus research and out-and-out lies on the establishment media - in contrast with both Wikipedia and FOX News. B-)
Why does every issue necessarily have a "left" and "right" side?
Many issues have more than two sides. But most of the power is concentrated in two major camps - labeled "left" and "right". When there's a disagreement between them be ready for them to fight - and for you to be caught in the battle.
(Of course when they agree with each other and disagree with you, and the first dissent is a third-tier block, you're in deeper trouble.)
"Fair and balanced" frequently means only an obfuscation of facts. All it takes is one nutbar (on either side of the spectrum) to introduce "the other side". Fox will then dutifully report both sides with (according to their guiding soundbite) equal weight (at best, though typically skewed to the right in presentation). This is bogus.
And in the situation where the left and right agree and you don't, you're the "nutbar". Then pray that FOX is still around. It might give YOU a chance to be heard by other "nutbars" who could help. You certainly won't be on the establishment media's radar screen (unless they can find enough humor in ridiculing you to fill a vacant slot on a slow news day).
Is it impossible that there is accepted (evident, rational) truth, beyond politics?
It is possible.
But does it matter?
When the issue is who will run your life, you're in the realm of politics. It behoves you to understand the major power blocks - in advance - so you can be prepared to defend what you hold dear.
News is about recent and upcoming events that might affect your life. In a "civilized" region where most people are insulated from most natural hazards, the remaining hazards are primarily from human interaction. Those are all related to politics - either directly caused by politics or affected by the environment created by political decisions.