Kudos belongs to John Graham-Cumming
on
Alan Turing Pardoned
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Governments as an organisation should reflect on the decisions made by people sitting in the same seats around the time they were born. The "right thing to do" is often diametrically opposed to the "popular thing to do". An official apology is a good thing, it's much more important to a large proportion of victims than you seem to think. Especially when the "problem" is something innate to the individual such as skin colour, sex or sexual preference. An apology is akin to official acceptance (back) into society. I know for a fact that the nationally broadcast apology to the native population here in Oz meant a lot to my aboriginal friends from the NW, particularly those in my age bracket (50-something).
So here's the thing, Turing's was an extraordinary man and their is no dodging the fact he was betrayed by society and his government. So my question is was the previous (Gordon Brown) apology addressed to Turing or did it include the other 100,000 anonymous victims of that barbaric policy, has anyone said sorry to the survivors? - Yes I've googled it to confirm my recollection, and you should too.
John Graham-Cumming: On behalf of all decent slashdotter's I wish you a very merry xmas.
The politicians were way too late with the apology and were more than willing to let Bletchley park rot less than a decade ago. Arseholes are just jumping on a grass roots bandwagon, desperately trying to convince people they were in the drivers seat the whole time..
Agree that the Sun is the source of all the energy in the climate. The composition of the earth's Atmosphere, oceans and crust, have been likened to the "thermostat" in that they can absorb or reflect that energy to varying degrees.
CO2 has been a major factor in climate for a looooong time, at least as far back as the Cambrian explosion since CO2 is what melted "snowball" earth prior to the Cambrian explosion. CO2 can be both a "feedback" (melting permafrost) or a "forcing" (volcanos, human emissions). When acting as a feedback it always amplifies the direction of the change. We have known about CO2's major role since the 1950's when improved spectrometers finally pinned down it's role in the ice ages, ( Milankovich cycles alone cannot account for the magnitude of the changes observed in the ice ages).
Our best estimates of an important metric called "climate sensitivity" come from Fourier's formula and paleoclimatology (aka-geology). Fourier's formula alone gives ~1.5C rise for a doubling of CO2 but that assumes Earth is an ideal black body, which it is not. Adding geological evidence to estimate the feedback component brings it up to ~3.0C, the error bars are between 1.5c and 4.5C for a doubling of CO2, with the upper limit being far less certain then the lower. The uncertainty at the upper end is due to the lack of knowledge on things like frozen methane in deep ocean beds. The recent IPCC report downgraded the risk from sudden "tipping points" so the current high end estimate of climate sensitivity (whatever it is exactly) has a smidge more certainty than the previous report.
Disclaimer, IANACS, just a layman with a 30yr interest in the subject, don't rely on what my aging neurons tell you, WP is your friend for climate facts and trivia and I'm more than happy to be (politely) corrected.
You're missing a couple of important points, not the least of which is that a Google bus has fuck all to do with the protester's predicament. Also the Woolworths protesters got the shit beaten out of them by the authorities. Do you remember the phrase "the whole world is watching" because that incident was a turning point in the civil rights movement where ordinary citizens were disgusted with the behaviour of the police on the nightly news.
Yes, vendor A says vendor B's free product sucks. I put MES on my win7 boxes after the free AGV let something thru earlier this year. The virus tricked win7 into thinking an infected system file was a good thing.Interestingly MSE was the only one of three free virus scanners I tried that picked up the infection.
However there was catch22 since MSE stubbornly refused to install itself until the infected file was gone and win7 kept restoring the infected file at boot up. The pragmatic developer in me gave up digging further down that particular rabbit hole. I realise I was now also fighting a win7 immune system that the virus had usurped, but I knew how it got in and that was enough to convince me to change the scanner I'd been using since the late 90's. First time in at least 10yrs I've had to wipe my own windows system disk because of an infection.
Why yes, IAACS, but the above is experience with MSE is a personal anecdote, not a professional opinion.
The EU has 27 states and 500M people, the US has 50 states and 300M people. Germany and California have comparable economies, Nato and the Pentagon serve similar roles, etc. Aside from that, calculations of who contributes what to the UN should really be done on a per capita basis before you start trying to compare large federations to each other.
Your fighting human nature by pointing out the obvious, we evolved a sophisticated "theory of mind" that perceives competing tribes as a single personality. Your mind will naturally construct such a personality for just about anything (cars, houses, pet rocks, etc), you can compensate with logic but you can't make it go away.
The UN eradicated smallpox and are very close to eradicating polio, if they did nothing else all the bluster and bullshit will have been worth it. If you expect them eradicate the people you personally view as tyrants and warmongers, you will be bitterly disappointed.
Sit down and talk? Really? How old are you, 12?
I'm in my 50's, in my experience it's the adults/nations who stamp their feet and won't talk who are generally perceived as immature. There's a strong meme in the US that only "good nations" should have a seat at the UN, it's a meme that displays a complete lack of understanding as to why the UN was formed in the first place. Also, if you believe in the US ideal of free speech you will defend ImADinnerJacket's inalienable right to stand on the podium and spew his bile to the world, nobody is forcing you to listen, which is why ImADinnerJacket is normally talking to empty seats.
Rosa Parks went much further than that, she deliberately and shamelessly broke a strict social taboo of the day. She was lucky not to have been raped and beaten for her insolence. Passive civil disobedience in the face of systematic and violent oppression, such as displayed by Indians under Gahndi and American's under MLK, takes a lot more guts than what Snowden did. Having said that, I agree - "Berating him for [running] is not just unrealistic, it's asinine.".
"Project for the New American Century".- Yes, anyone who knows anything about anti-science propaganda in the mass media will also recognise that name. They specialise in getting climate denial propaganda printed in the opinion columns of many of the world's leading news outlets. Very effective lobbyists, particularly in the US, their services are surprisingly cheap too.
Who the fuck is going to invade the USA? - The US arsenal dwarfs anything else on Earth, even if we all ganged up against you we would still have a lot of trouble mounting a successful invasion.
A drunk at the wheel is just as deadly as a Jihadist in a cockpit, however there is no question that DUI checkpoints do save lives. My Aussie home state of Victoria was one of the first in the world to introduce them in the 1980's, combined with ubiquitous speed/red light cameras the effect on the yearly road toll since booze busses started randomly testing drivers has been dramatic, from ~600 in the 80's down to ~250 today, while at the same time there are over twice as many cars on Victorian roads. The success of the 'TAC' program (re: youtube for 20yr long ad campaign) has changed social attitudes firmly against DUI, like myself most people here are in favour of getting drunks off the road in exchange for the minor inconvenience of being randomly tested every now and then.
Public roads are basically public transport infrastructure for private vehicles. Driving on public roads is not an individualist pursuit, nor do you have any "inalienable right" to do so without the express permission of a license. The license is proof to everyone else sharing the road that your knowledge of the rules has been tested. You either cooperate with others by following those simple rules. If not you are removed from the driving population via arrest, or they wash your remains into the gutter with a fire hose..
Yes they are claiming that cooperating/contracting to the US government is a reportable risk, even when such reporting would break a court order. They also seem to be claiming that dealing with the US government has obviously "tarnished its reputation".
I can't see how those claims will not be laughed out of a US court, the simple fact is that if you subtract $12B from the revenue IBM has made from the US government, the shareholder has received a consistent and healthy profit from the relationship for at least the past six decades.
Seems to me this is a political law suit, their intention is to make a point, they already know they will lose and have written the whole thing off as "advertising"..
Also. It's classified government information, where's the risk taking actions? - Where did IBM fail to perform due diligence? Is the pension fund claiming that contracting/cooperating with a duly elected US federal government is a reckless risk to the shareholders investment? Note that doesn't mean I think IBM actions were morally justifiable just that the pension fund is going to have a hell of a time convincing a US court that IBM put shareholders funds at risk by cooperating with the (notorious?) US government.
The US government is quite likely IBM's biggest customer. IBM just has to read out the profit/loss statement from the US government to demonstrate the occasional $12B damage in brand recognition is just "the cost of doing business" with the US government. IBM's lawyers are probably sitting around snorting coke and laughing their arses off at this.
The NSA may be acting independently but it is not a separate state or nation (yet). The federal, state, tribal, and local governments have a limited immunity in the US, the NSA is a government department, it is not "The" government anymore than the Pentagon itself is.
Long term government projects are more like two plumbers attempting to take the credit for unblocking the toilet and blaming each other for the mess on the floor. The new Oz government is just more vindictive towards it's political enemies than usual.
A brief history of the NBN:
Right wing make hay while the sun shines and stash away a $40b "nation building" fund. ($40B is a line item in the US budget but it's lot of money in a country of 20 million)
Left wing gov come up with NBN plan..
Academics and engineers nod approvingly.
Right wing opposition leader (Malcom) cautiously endorses the idea
Left wing gov cracks open the piggy bank and hands out contracts.
Right wing leader is deposed because he was negotiating in good faith with the left on carbon pricing, he is replaced by new leader (Tony).
Tony makes sure Malcom is not going to be a future problem by handing him the impossible job of attacking the plan he cautiously endorsed.
Malcom goes on TV and attempts not to look foolish while trying to convince the nation that FTTN is better that FTTH.
Tony wins election, merges the Science and Industry ministry and drops the position of Minister for Science. Malcom sacks NBN board and replaces it with Tony's business cronies.
Contractors sit around burning dollars waiting for someone to tell them WTF is going on.
Some time in the not too distant future the money is gone and we have half an NBN for twice the price. Democratic governments take market competition to the extreme and the inevitable result is infighting and waste. If anyone has a better idea I'm all ears, but please don't say "self-regulation", corporations have the same basic political machinations as governments, when left to their own devices they suffer the same distrust, infighting and waste, it's just easier to spot in democratic governments.
The "excitement" is about the possibility of sampling the water as was done by the Cassini probe for one of Saturn's moons (Hyperion?) that has similar plumes. Cassini detected organic compounds in those plumes, so the "building blocks of life" are in the sub-surface ocean of that moon. Hardly surprising since the universe is chock full of organic compounds, the most interesting bit with these moons is that the organics are dissolved in liquid water beneath the surface and tidal forces are strong enough to created deep sea volcanic vents (the convection currents and lipid rich water around these vents is where "rock eating" single celled organisms almost certainly first emerged on Earth).
I don't think anyone is claiming the plumes are a result of life.
We don't know what's under the ice but we can make an educated guess and say things like, it's almost certain it will have organic compounds, it's highly probable it will have simple cells if what we understand about the origins of life on Earth and deep sea volcanic vents is correct, if the ocean is oxygenated via some process, protein chains such a colognes (that bind cells together) can exist so it may have multi-cellular life, it's very unlikely to have nuclear submarines. No oxygen and no sunlight is not a problem to extremophile bacteria that can extract energy directly from minerals in the rock such as sulphur and uranium.
Of course at the end of the day, it's just speculation. If your own informed speculation leads you to think (single celled) life under Europa's ice is unlikely then you hold the minority scientific view. Still it's a Schrodinger Moon, you can't know if what is inside is alive or dead until you open it up and observe it, personally I hope I live to see a autonomous submarine rover trying to outrun a giant Europan squid, but I doubt I will live that long.
So it seems that consciousness and attention can have effects in the physical world
Of course it can, what do you think is controlling my arms as I scratch my arse? It has other names, spirit, soul, mind, etc. There's a reason scientists and philosophers alike call consciousness "The hard problem", it all boils down to the fact that you can never fully understand yourself. You are not separate from the rest of the universe, you and the universe are one (or as Sagan put it) "We are the part of the universe that observes itself", and by extension that implies we can never fully understand the universe. I don't know about anyone else but like Feynman "I'm ok with that, I'm not afraid of not knowing, I find it more interesting".
Having said that the world is full of scammers who use very clever magic tricks to separate the gullible from their wallets. The "clever" part is that they know enough about the human mind to be able to distract it from what's really happening. Of course there are others who truly believe they have special powers but they always turn out to be mistaken when put to the test.
To summarise: Wake me up when James Randi pays out on his million dollar challenge.
Weather satellites are not a "spin off" from "destroy Moscow", accurate weather forecasts are very important to military planners. The fact that it's useful to the public is a secondary consideration. TV and phone satellites are paid for by corporations not governments.
Slashdot Mirror
Governments as an organisation should reflect on the decisions made by people sitting in the same seats around the time they were born. The "right thing to do" is often diametrically opposed to the "popular thing to do". An official apology is a good thing, it's much more important to a large proportion of victims than you seem to think. Especially when the "problem" is something innate to the individual such as skin colour, sex or sexual preference. An apology is akin to official acceptance (back) into society. I know for a fact that the nationally broadcast apology to the native population here in Oz meant a lot to my aboriginal friends from the NW, particularly those in my age bracket (50-something).
So here's the thing, Turing's was an extraordinary man and their is no dodging the fact he was betrayed by society and his government. So my question is was the previous (Gordon Brown) apology addressed to Turing or did it include the other 100,000 anonymous victims of that barbaric policy, has anyone said sorry to the survivors? - Yes I've googled it to confirm my recollection, and you should too.
John Graham-Cumming: On behalf of all decent slashdotter's I wish you a very merry xmas.
The politicians were way too late with the apology and were more than willing to let Bletchley park rot less than a decade ago. Arseholes are just jumping on a grass roots bandwagon, desperately trying to convince people they were in the drivers seat the whole time..
Agree that the Sun is the source of all the energy in the climate. The composition of the earth's Atmosphere, oceans and crust, have been likened to the "thermostat" in that they can absorb or reflect that energy to varying degrees.
CO2 has been a major factor in climate for a looooong time, at least as far back as the Cambrian explosion since CO2 is what melted "snowball" earth prior to the Cambrian explosion. CO2 can be both a "feedback" (melting permafrost) or a "forcing" (volcanos, human emissions). When acting as a feedback it always amplifies the direction of the change. We have known about CO2's major role since the 1950's when improved spectrometers finally pinned down it's role in the ice ages, ( Milankovich cycles alone cannot account for the magnitude of the changes observed in the ice ages).
Our best estimates of an important metric called "climate sensitivity" come from Fourier's formula and paleoclimatology (aka-geology). Fourier's formula alone gives ~1.5C rise for a doubling of CO2 but that assumes Earth is an ideal black body, which it is not. Adding geological evidence to estimate the feedback component brings it up to ~3.0C, the error bars are between 1.5c and 4.5C for a doubling of CO2, with the upper limit being far less certain then the lower. The uncertainty at the upper end is due to the lack of knowledge on things like frozen methane in deep ocean beds. The recent IPCC report downgraded the risk from sudden "tipping points" so the current high end estimate of climate sensitivity (whatever it is exactly) has a smidge more certainty than the previous report.
Disclaimer, IANACS, just a layman with a 30yr interest in the subject, don't rely on what my aging neurons tell you, WP is your friend for climate facts and trivia and I'm more than happy to be (politely) corrected.
You're missing a couple of important points, not the least of which is that a Google bus has fuck all to do with the protester's predicament. Also the Woolworths protesters got the shit beaten out of them by the authorities. Do you remember the phrase "the whole world is watching" because that incident was a turning point in the civil rights movement where ordinary citizens were disgusted with the behaviour of the police on the nightly news.
Yes, vendor A says vendor B's free product sucks. I put MES on my win7 boxes after the free AGV let something thru earlier this year. The virus tricked win7 into thinking an infected system file was a good thing.Interestingly MSE was the only one of three free virus scanners I tried that picked up the infection.
However there was catch22 since MSE stubbornly refused to install itself until the infected file was gone and win7 kept restoring the infected file at boot up. The pragmatic developer in me gave up digging further down that particular rabbit hole. I realise I was now also fighting a win7 immune system that the virus had usurped, but I knew how it got in and that was enough to convince me to change the scanner I'd been using since the late 90's. First time in at least 10yrs I've had to wipe my own windows system disk because of an infection.
Why yes, IAACS, but the above is experience with MSE is a personal anecdote, not a professional opinion.
The EU has 27 states and 500M people, the US has 50 states and 300M people. Germany and California have comparable economies, Nato and the Pentagon serve similar roles, etc. Aside from that, calculations of who contributes what to the UN should really be done on a per capita basis before you start trying to compare large federations to each other.
Your fighting human nature by pointing out the obvious, we evolved a sophisticated "theory of mind" that perceives competing tribes as a single personality. Your mind will naturally construct such a personality for just about anything (cars, houses, pet rocks, etc), you can compensate with logic but you can't make it go away.
nothing of importance is handled by the UN.
The UN eradicated smallpox and are very close to eradicating polio, if they did nothing else all the bluster and bullshit will have been worth it. If you expect them eradicate the people you personally view as tyrants and warmongers, you will be bitterly disappointed.
Sit down and talk? Really? How old are you, 12?
I'm in my 50's, in my experience it's the adults/nations who stamp their feet and won't talk who are generally perceived as immature. There's a strong meme in the US that only "good nations" should have a seat at the UN, it's a meme that displays a complete lack of understanding as to why the UN was formed in the first place. Also, if you believe in the US ideal of free speech you will defend ImADinnerJacket's inalienable right to stand on the podium and spew his bile to the world, nobody is forcing you to listen, which is why ImADinnerJacket is normally talking to empty seats.
The uncle is not blood, the aunt is his dad's sister, her and the uncle split up not that long before the execution.
she had not even actually broken a law
Rosa Parks went much further than that, she deliberately and shamelessly broke a strict social taboo of the day. She was lucky not to have been raped and beaten for her insolence. Passive civil disobedience in the face of systematic and violent oppression, such as displayed by Indians under Gahndi and American's under MLK, takes a lot more guts than what Snowden did. Having said that, I agree - "Berating him for [running] is not just unrealistic, it's asinine.".
Exactly, when one government desperately wants to keep you alive, you can be sure at least half a dozen others desperately want to kill you.
"Project for the New American Century".- Yes, anyone who knows anything about anti-science propaganda in the mass media will also recognise that name. They specialise in getting climate denial propaganda printed in the opinion columns of many of the world's leading news outlets. Very effective lobbyists, particularly in the US, their services are surprisingly cheap too.
Who the fuck is going to invade the USA? - The US arsenal dwarfs anything else on Earth, even if we all ganged up against you we would still have a lot of trouble mounting a successful invasion.
Copyright is not property.
LOL, tell that to the judge. Most of them have a good sense of humour, he will probably laugh so hard he will let you off.
oh 'accidentally' - I don't have an answer.
Men at work vs "Kookaburra in a gum tree"
A drunk at the wheel is just as deadly as a Jihadist in a cockpit, however there is no question that DUI checkpoints do save lives. My Aussie home state of Victoria was one of the first in the world to introduce them in the 1980's, combined with ubiquitous speed/red light cameras the effect on the yearly road toll since booze busses started randomly testing drivers has been dramatic, from ~600 in the 80's down to ~250 today, while at the same time there are over twice as many cars on Victorian roads. The success of the 'TAC' program (re: youtube for 20yr long ad campaign) has changed social attitudes firmly against DUI, like myself most people here are in favour of getting drunks off the road in exchange for the minor inconvenience of being randomly tested every now and then.
Public roads are basically public transport infrastructure for private vehicles. Driving on public roads is not an individualist pursuit, nor do you have any "inalienable right" to do so without the express permission of a license. The license is proof to everyone else sharing the road that your knowledge of the rules has been tested. You either cooperate with others by following those simple rules. If not you are removed from the driving population via arrest, or they wash your remains into the gutter with a fire hose..
Yes they are claiming that cooperating/contracting to the US government is a reportable risk, even when such reporting would break a court order. They also seem to be claiming that dealing with the US government has obviously "tarnished its reputation".
I can't see how those claims will not be laughed out of a US court, the simple fact is that if you subtract $12B from the revenue IBM has made from the US government, the shareholder has received a consistent and healthy profit from the relationship for at least the past six decades.
Seems to me this is a political law suit, their intention is to make a point, they already know they will lose and have written the whole thing off as "advertising"..
Also. It's classified government information, where's the risk taking actions? - Where did IBM fail to perform due diligence? Is the pension fund claiming that contracting/cooperating with a duly elected US federal government is a reckless risk to the shareholders investment? Note that doesn't mean I think IBM actions were morally justifiable just that the pension fund is going to have a hell of a time convincing a US court that IBM put shareholders funds at risk by cooperating with the (notorious?) US government.
The US government is quite likely IBM's biggest customer. IBM just has to read out the profit/loss statement from the US government to demonstrate the occasional $12B damage in brand recognition is just "the cost of doing business" with the US government. IBM's lawyers are probably sitting around snorting coke and laughing their arses off at this.
The NSA may be acting independently but it is not a separate state or nation (yet). The federal, state, tribal, and local governments have a limited immunity in the US, the NSA is a government department, it is not "The" government anymore than the Pentagon itself is.
Long term government projects are more like two plumbers attempting to take the credit for unblocking the toilet and blaming each other for the mess on the floor. The new Oz government is just more vindictive towards it's political enemies than usual.
A brief history of the NBN:
Right wing make hay while the sun shines and stash away a $40b "nation building" fund. ($40B is a line item in the US budget but it's lot of money in a country of 20 million)
Left wing gov come up with NBN plan..
Academics and engineers nod approvingly.
Right wing opposition leader (Malcom) cautiously endorses the idea
Left wing gov cracks open the piggy bank and hands out contracts.
Right wing leader is deposed because he was negotiating in good faith with the left on carbon pricing, he is replaced by new leader (Tony).
Tony makes sure Malcom is not going to be a future problem by handing him the impossible job of attacking the plan he cautiously endorsed.
Malcom goes on TV and attempts not to look foolish while trying to convince the nation that FTTN is better that FTTH.
Tony wins election, merges the Science and Industry ministry and drops the position of Minister for Science. Malcom sacks NBN board and replaces it with Tony's business cronies.
Contractors sit around burning dollars waiting for someone to tell them WTF is going on.
Some time in the not too distant future the money is gone and we have half an NBN for twice the price. Democratic governments take market competition to the extreme and the inevitable result is infighting and waste. If anyone has a better idea I'm all ears, but please don't say "self-regulation", corporations have the same basic political machinations as governments, when left to their own devices they suffer the same distrust, infighting and waste, it's just easier to spot in democratic governments.
He murdered his uncle for political reasons and doesn't want everyone to know about it, that kind of behaviour predates 1984 by several millennia.
The "excitement" is about the possibility of sampling the water as was done by the Cassini probe for one of Saturn's moons (Hyperion?) that has similar plumes. Cassini detected organic compounds in those plumes, so the "building blocks of life" are in the sub-surface ocean of that moon. Hardly surprising since the universe is chock full of organic compounds, the most interesting bit with these moons is that the organics are dissolved in liquid water beneath the surface and tidal forces are strong enough to created deep sea volcanic vents (the convection currents and lipid rich water around these vents is where "rock eating" single celled organisms almost certainly first emerged on Earth).
I don't think anyone is claiming the plumes are a result of life.
We don't know what's under the ice but we can make an educated guess and say things like, it's almost certain it will have organic compounds, it's highly probable it will have simple cells if what we understand about the origins of life on Earth and deep sea volcanic vents is correct, if the ocean is oxygenated via some process, protein chains such a colognes (that bind cells together) can exist so it may have multi-cellular life, it's very unlikely to have nuclear submarines. No oxygen and no sunlight is not a problem to extremophile bacteria that can extract energy directly from minerals in the rock such as sulphur and uranium.
Of course at the end of the day, it's just speculation. If your own informed speculation leads you to think (single celled) life under Europa's ice is unlikely then you hold the minority scientific view. Still it's a Schrodinger Moon, you can't know if what is inside is alive or dead until you open it up and observe it, personally I hope I live to see a autonomous submarine rover trying to outrun a giant Europan squid, but I doubt I will live that long.
So it seems that consciousness and attention can have effects in the physical world
Of course it can, what do you think is controlling my arms as I scratch my arse? It has other names, spirit, soul, mind, etc. There's a reason scientists and philosophers alike call consciousness "The hard problem", it all boils down to the fact that you can never fully understand yourself. You are not separate from the rest of the universe, you and the universe are one (or as Sagan put it) "We are the part of the universe that observes itself", and by extension that implies we can never fully understand the universe. I don't know about anyone else but like Feynman "I'm ok with that, I'm not afraid of not knowing, I find it more interesting".
Having said that the world is full of scammers who use very clever magic tricks to separate the gullible from their wallets. The "clever" part is that they know enough about the human mind to be able to distract it from what's really happening. Of course there are others who truly believe they have special powers but they always turn out to be mistaken when put to the test.
To summarise: Wake me up when James Randi pays out on his million dollar challenge.
Weather satellites are not a "spin off" from "destroy Moscow", accurate weather forecasts are very important to military planners. The fact that it's useful to the public is a secondary consideration. TV and phone satellites are paid for by corporations not governments.