I think is safe to say that there is plenty of basis for a federal police force (but not being a constitutional scholar, I could be wrong). I have no problem with enforcing laws. I do have a problem with Congress, Ashcroft, et al being allowed to erode our liberty in the name of security - (nothing original here, Ben Franklin covered it quite well.)
The FOIA and its state-level counterparts, like the Texas Open Records Act, exist to allow people to have access to unclassified information created at the taxpayers' expense. It keeps many people from simply calling up and asking for unreasonable things, and it gives a means for legitimate requests.
My problem is that actions such as these could easily have been undertaken with more finese if they intended to find a real terrorist. Austin, Texas, and particularly UT, has plenty of people that find joy in perplexing the authorities - more so that the usual college. This is primarily because UT fosters an environment of thought and questioning (think U of Texas Berkeley).
If I were them, I would make sure the story got to the media, so more people would think twice before making FOIA/TORA requests, simply to reduce my workload on these goose chases. But this defeats the purpose of these acts and reduces public access to legitimate information.
Yes, I think I do know a bit about what I think. As for what they should be doing - I think it is safe to say that they would not be visible about a real investigation: they: "we're the fuzz, come to interrogate ya'" he: "fckoff" they: "we think you're a terrorist, why ya' askin' questions?" he: "'cause i'm gonna do bad stuff!"
If they were really looking at this guy, don't you think they'd be somewhat more more careful about tipping their hand. It's about the unsaid public statement that we will look at you if you ask questions.
--Insert obligatory "In Soviet Russia" line here--
The feds should never have been visibly involved in something so trivial unless there was an indication of something else.
It seems that without another cause, this would constitute coersion in order to deny access to information which is otherwise not secret. Even if they "approve" the request, there is a chilling effect on other requests. Probably the intent.
Exactly how long has it been since we first took an accurate reading of temperature, much less CO/CO2 levels in the atmosphere? OMG, 0.2 degrees! GMAFB!
I understand that we use other indicators, but you have not convinced me that we even know that global warming, beyond any "normal", cyclic variation, IS occurring - yes it seems to be so, but science is about proof, not postulate.
As an engineer and a scientist, I am trained discern fact from fiction, but let's face it, if I'm trying to get research money, I know that the political-types are going to have to be motivated. The average voter/consumer is willing to relinquish control out of fear (think PATRIOT Act) or mystery (think religion).
It's kinda like Venkman in Ghostbusters says "you'll save the lives of millions of registered voters".
The chance of irregular heartbeat following electrocution is something like double the norm for 72 hours post shock for common voltage/amp combinations. Until the HMOs got involved, it was not uncommon to be hospitalized for 1-3 days following even relatively minor (110 VAC) experiences when the victim/patient had symptoms like muscle contracture.
Like almost everything doctors do, it was based on (bad) experiences "he's fine, send him home." D'oh.
1 - the path through the body is the key - if it passes through the heart at some level (low mA) you can/will/do get V-fib (VF) 2 - you must have voltage to get to the heart - less than 80 will seldom do it, but this depends on skin moisture and pH, how much water you have on board, do you drink Gatorade or just sweat alot... 3 - high-current electrocutions do kill people, because you don't get this high current instantly or constantly - imagine 2 A, followed by a trailing off to 80 mA - gotcha. 4 - Gauss plays some role - if your skin carries the current because it is wet or otherwise highly ocnductive, you may feel a shock at a lower voltage, but no cardiac issues (except fright). 5 - Cars are running on DC, which requires that you basically make contact with two dissimilarly polarized surfaces - it cannot ground to the earth - old electronics technicians only use one hand for this reason. Stick a 9-volt on your tongue and tell us about it.
So we've all agreed that too much Pepsi is bad. We also mostly agree that overconsumption is the main cause of obesity.
We can discuss the biochemistry of glucose and fat metabolism all day, but it is apparent that most people around here, people in general, and most doctors, don't really know biochemistry.
YMMV!
I'll close with a fortune cookie I've never seen, but imagine is somewhere: "Don't ask a fat person how to lose weight if you want to be skinny."
No digital, most of the CCD's will overheat on long (minute+) exposures.
As for film, the best way I've used is to get to a really dark place, or at least no glowing of the sky. Open the shutter with a remote or bulb and leave it that way until you see one. Close the shutter and try again...we are talking minutes - you could have to wait 5-10 minutes in some cases.
It also works to leave the shutter open through several streakers. If you are persistent, you may get a good "earthgrazer" that travels the entire span of the sky.
Check out www.spaceweather.com (sorry, not in the mood to html this.)
I thought the object of wardriving was to receive, rather than emit certain RF's. (But then again, it turns out that the priests have been emitting a bit more than we thought.)
Thank you, I'll be here to Thursday. -- Only from Italy would a story come proclaiming supernature as a cause of such a phenomenon. But tourism is their primary source of foreign currency, and the sheep are asking for a new miracle - maybe this is Sodom II.
Hello, pot, this is public radio...
on
Real Problems
·
· Score: 1
As if public radio (incl. Minnesota PR), while in the midst of the spring national pledge drive, should be complaining about a few mouse clicks to get the free thing.
The original post refers to "Unix nerds who care about usability..." talk about concepts too far apart to be in the same sentence...must still be April 1st.
Did you hear the one about SCO trying to buy FreeBSD so they can actually own something in Unix? They paid $59.95 at Fry's.
Let's not fool ourselves into thinking that Gateway knows things we don't about how to plug in a PCI card or install a HDD.
They failed to underestimate the "I want it now" of customers. If they want to wait, they will order online for a few dollars less.
It would have worked if they had put a single, well-trained tech in every store to "customize" your box (the computer you pervs), and boom, you're out the door with a custom Gateway PC in 15 minutes. If you want a burn-in, pick it up tommorrow.
Or is a factory-built PC somehow special (having been in a few assembly plants, don't count on better, necessarily.)
It appears that there are at least three current models, some of which must be 120 VAC, since they will bake real cookies - I doubt that a dry cell has the requisite power to do this. (www.easybake.com)
The real problem is, though, that there is no 120 VAC inside your computer, and putting it there would seriously interrupt your system (spurious bits of EM).
The trick will be fitting the Easy Bake (not EZ) onto the power supply. Most of us don't have that kind of extra wattage. Now, if they piped the CPU heat into the bay, we'd be in business: a 40 watt oven.
Bill Gates' idea of free is "at no additional cost" over and above Windows. As it seems to me, it is pretty much free now, compared to years ago. People will pay for hardware to get what they want - they will pay for software to get what they want. But if, Bill gives everyone a new computer with every Windows purchase, they will buy Windows just to get free stuff.
Unfree stuff drives innovation.
This also explains his Windows-BIOS integration model. Think X-box, or maybe the recent Slashdot story about putting a full PC in a Win XP box. (Don't count on autodetection of what box it is in and booting Redhat when appropriate.)
I suppose they could use any compression scheme, but I imagine that they intended to stick to the mainstream - that is closer to MPEG - simply because it was the sort of thing with which people were familiar. If they had adopted something that seemed less familiar in name, people, including the tech writers, would have been less enthusiastic.
You don't really think that Apple would have ever gotten the recording industry to buy into no DRM, unlimited use, and free trading, do you?
It's about the money, it's always about the money. Technical excellence is for geeks (look at Betamax); ease of use is for consumers (look at Windows). Consumers don't care, they want it when they want it and will accept fair restrictions in lieu of no restrictions, when the latter is not easy or not available.
Usage patterns show there is quite a bit of unused space, from the perspective of traffic. And why should any one entity be alloacated 16 million externally visable addresses?
It is realistic to think that there is quite a bit of IPV4 space inside DARPA and many other places, which operate unconnected in all ways to the common internet. The problem with a single Class A is that it would require a purely random virus addressing scheme, since they indicated that they expect a broad cross section of the net traffic. If not, a virus could exploit that by skipping that address space entirely - which, I am sure, is why they are so vague about the project. They could just use the "10." space, since it is used on local networks.
That said - WAY COOL, MAN!
Imagine the ability to capture such a sample from the world's human population to check and trace viruses IRL. An epidemiologist's dream.
You would not test fly a new Boeing at DFW during the evening rush, would you. Not that the X-prize winner will be flying out of a typical commercial airport, but you get my drift. Other than a launch and recovery facility, i.e., a long runway, describe to me what you think of as "characteristically close." Also, this won't be head to head, and the launches may be weeks and miles apart, unless they wait until the deadline, which they are not doing.
On anouther note: I'm really bummed that Las Escaleras a las Estrellas in Fort Stockton, Texas, did not make it to the short list. You'd think that a site with no infrastructure, no workforce base from which to draw, and which is considered amazingly corrupt by much of law enforcement would be just the ticket.
Slashdot is more a source of entertainment that actual news on slow days. But you're still here.
It's like there isn't enough going on in the world to fill a 30 minute TV newscast, so they have to tell us that the Weazeldip 5000 isn't all it's cracked up to be so don't buy it.
I would argue that inspite of this, it is Stuff that matters, to us. Maybe we can convince them to make a heading "Olds", instead.
-- I have never met anyone IRL who even knows what Slashdot is. Not that it comes up alot.
Spelling notwithstanding, $2000 is irrelevant if it does not work. The only solution is to make it impossible to SMTP mail without some validation of the sender. This must be done with no expense or unusual hoops to jump through, and let's not let the fascists control this one - you know who I mean.
You can't rely on whitelists; automated blacklists don't work since spammers steal our 'net identity to spam us and others, causing innocents to be blacklisted.
As it is, I could spam all day using postfix or sendmail with a random domain name as the sending domain. This is just crazy. It is in a sense criminal, since my bandwidth is being used without my permission by all of the attachments coming every hour. LIKE I GIVE A RAT'S ASS ABOUT PHARMACEUTICALS, NIGERIA, OR HOT STOCK TIPS!
CAUTION! rant follows: God Damn It! Get the fuck off the net you cheap-ass cowards. It's like my dog barking at the other dogs until I open the gate - if we can find a way to unmask these spamming motherfuckers, it will stop. (Viral mailings notwithstanding.)
It is posturing, just as we'd do if an American citizen were sentenced harshly in a criminal case overseas. We would not really interfere with the case, but someone from State or Justice would poke their nose in to let them know that we are watching.
And then there is the whole "stop interfering without ability to sell government" thing.
I imagine that what he meant to say was "We didn't really do anything to them, so neither should you, 'cause it will mean that people will realize that we are incompetant boobs who are in the hip pocket of big business."
-- excerpt below from excite.com
"Justice Dept Worried by Microsoft Ruling
Wednesday March 24, 5:46 PM EST
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department's antitrust chief said on Wednesday that the huge fine European regulators imposed on Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) was "unfortunate" and other sanctions against the company could have "unintended consequences."
"Sound antitrust policy must avoid chilling innovation and competition even by 'dominant' companies," Assistant Attorney General Hewitt Pate said in a statement.
(C)2004 Reuters Limited. "
Slashdot Mirror
I think is safe to say that there is plenty of basis for a federal police force (but not being a constitutional scholar, I could be wrong). I have no problem with enforcing laws. I do have a problem with Congress, Ashcroft, et al being allowed to erode our liberty in the name of security - (nothing original here, Ben Franklin covered it quite well.)
The FOIA and its state-level counterparts, like the Texas Open Records Act, exist to allow people to have access to unclassified information created at the taxpayers' expense. It keeps many people from simply calling up and asking for unreasonable things, and it gives a means for legitimate requests.
My problem is that actions such as these could easily have been undertaken with more finese if they intended to find a real terrorist. Austin, Texas, and particularly UT, has plenty of people that find joy in perplexing the authorities - more so that the usual college. This is primarily because UT fosters an environment of thought and questioning (think U of Texas Berkeley).
If I were them, I would make sure the story got to the media, so more people would think twice before making FOIA/TORA requests, simply to reduce my workload on these goose chases. But this defeats the purpose of these acts and reduces public access to legitimate information.
Yes, I think I do know a bit about what I think. As for what they should be doing - I think it is safe to say that they would not be visible about a real investigation:
they: "we're the fuzz, come to interrogate ya'"
he: "fckoff"
they: "we think you're a terrorist, why ya' askin' questions?"
he: "'cause i'm gonna do bad stuff!"
If they were really looking at this guy, don't you think they'd be somewhat more more careful about tipping their hand. It's about the unsaid public statement that we will look at you if you ask questions.
--Insert obligatory "In Soviet Russia" line here--
The feds should never have been visibly involved in something so trivial unless there was an indication of something else.
It seems that without another cause, this would constitute coersion in order to deny access to information which is otherwise not secret. Even if they "approve" the request, there is a chilling effect on other requests. Probably the intent.
Exactly how long has it been since we first took an accurate reading of temperature, much less CO/CO2 levels in the atmosphere? OMG, 0.2 degrees! GMAFB!
I understand that we use other indicators, but you have not convinced me that we even know that global warming, beyond any "normal", cyclic variation, IS occurring - yes it seems to be so, but science is about proof, not postulate.
As an engineer and a scientist, I am trained discern fact from fiction, but let's face it, if I'm trying to get research money, I know that the political-types are going to have to be motivated. The average voter/consumer is willing to relinquish control out of fear (think PATRIOT Act) or mystery (think religion).
It's kinda like Venkman in Ghostbusters says "you'll save the lives of millions of registered voters".
The chance of irregular heartbeat following electrocution is something like double the norm for 72 hours post shock for common voltage/amp combinations. Until the HMOs got involved, it was not uncommon to be hospitalized for 1-3 days following even relatively minor (110 VAC) experiences when the victim/patient had symptoms like muscle contracture.
Like almost everything doctors do, it was based on (bad) experiences "he's fine, send him home." D'oh.
1 - the path through the body is the key - if it passes through the heart at some level (low mA) you can/will/do get V-fib (VF)
2 - you must have voltage to get to the heart - less than 80 will seldom do it, but this depends on skin moisture and pH, how much water you have on board, do you drink Gatorade or just sweat alot...
3 - high-current electrocutions do kill people, because you don't get this high current instantly or constantly - imagine 2 A, followed by a trailing off to 80 mA - gotcha.
4 - Gauss plays some role - if your skin carries the current because it is wet or otherwise highly ocnductive, you may feel a shock at a lower voltage, but no cardiac issues (except fright).
5 - Cars are running on DC, which requires that you basically make contact with two dissimilarly polarized surfaces - it cannot ground to the earth - old electronics technicians only use one hand for this reason.
Stick a 9-volt on your tongue and tell us about it.
So we've all agreed that too much Pepsi is bad. We also mostly agree that overconsumption is the main cause of obesity.
We can discuss the biochemistry of glucose and fat metabolism all day, but it is apparent that most people around here, people in general, and most doctors, don't really know biochemistry.
YMMV!
I'll close with a fortune cookie I've never seen, but imagine is somewhere: "Don't ask a fat person how to lose weight if you want to be skinny."
No digital, most of the CCD's will overheat on long (minute+) exposures.
As for film, the best way I've used is to get to a really dark place, or at least no glowing of the sky. Open the shutter with a remote or bulb and leave it that way until you see one. Close the shutter and try again...we are talking minutes - you could have to wait 5-10 minutes in some cases.
It also works to leave the shutter open through several streakers. If you are persistent, you may get a good "earthgrazer" that travels the entire span of the sky.
Check out www.spaceweather.com (sorry, not in the mood to html this.)
I thought the object of wardriving was to receive, rather than emit certain RF's. (But then again, it turns out that the priests have been emitting a bit more than we thought.)
Thank you, I'll be here to Thursday.
--
Only from Italy would a story come proclaiming supernature as a cause of such a phenomenon. But tourism is their primary source of foreign currency, and the sheep are asking for a new miracle - maybe this is Sodom II.
As if public radio (incl. Minnesota PR), while in the midst of the spring national pledge drive, should be complaining about a few mouse clicks to get the free thing.
The original post refers to "Unix nerds who care about usability..." talk about concepts too far apart to be in the same sentence...must still be April 1st.
Did you hear the one about SCO trying to buy FreeBSD so they can actually own something in Unix? They paid $59.95 at Fry's.
Let's not fool ourselves into thinking that Gateway knows things we don't about how to plug in a PCI card or install a HDD.
They failed to underestimate the "I want it now" of customers. If they want to wait, they will order online for a few dollars less.
It would have worked if they had put a single, well-trained tech in every store to "customize" your box (the computer you pervs), and boom, you're out the door with a custom Gateway PC in 15 minutes. If you want a burn-in, pick it up tommorrow.
Or is a factory-built PC somehow special (having been in a few assembly plants, don't count on better, necessarily.)
It appears that there are at least three current models, some of which must be 120 VAC, since they will bake real cookies - I doubt that a dry cell has the requisite power to do this. (www.easybake.com)
The real problem is, though, that there is no 120 VAC inside your computer, and putting it there would seriously interrupt your system (spurious bits of EM).
The trick will be fitting the Easy Bake (not EZ) onto the power supply. Most of us don't have that kind of extra wattage. Now, if they piped the CPU heat into the bay, we'd be in business: a 40 watt oven.
He's on this thread, way up top, if you read the comments (username: Ry4an)
Bill Gates' idea of free is "at no additional cost" over and above Windows. As it seems to me, it is pretty much free now, compared to years ago. People will pay for hardware to get what they want - they will pay for software to get what they want. But if, Bill gives everyone a new computer with every Windows purchase, they will buy Windows just to get free stuff.
Unfree stuff drives innovation.
This also explains his Windows-BIOS integration model. Think X-box, or maybe the recent Slashdot story about putting a full PC in a Win XP box. (Don't count on autodetection of what box it is in and booting Redhat when appropriate.)
I suppose they could use any compression scheme, but I imagine that they intended to stick to the mainstream - that is closer to MPEG - simply because it was the sort of thing with which people were familiar. If they had adopted something that seemed less familiar in name, people, including the tech writers, would have been less enthusiastic.
ogg/vorbis...Yeah, whatever.
You don't really think that Apple would have ever gotten the recording industry to buy into no DRM, unlimited use, and free trading, do you?
It's about the money, it's always about the money. Technical excellence is for geeks (look at Betamax); ease of use is for consumers (look at Windows). Consumers don't care, they want it when they want it and will accept fair restrictions in lieu of no restrictions, when the latter is not easy or not available.
Usage patterns show there is quite a bit of unused space, from the perspective of traffic. And why should any one entity be alloacated 16 million externally visable addresses?
PS: Next time, try "vulnerable".
It is realistic to think that there is quite a bit of IPV4 space inside DARPA and many other places, which operate unconnected in all ways to the common internet. The problem with a single Class A is that it would require a purely random virus addressing scheme, since they indicated that they expect a broad cross section of the net traffic. If not, a virus could exploit that by skipping that address space entirely - which, I am sure, is why they are so vague about the project. They could just use the "10." space, since it is used on local networks.
That said - WAY COOL, MAN!
Imagine the ability to capture such a sample from the world's human population to check and trace viruses IRL. An epidemiologist's dream.
You would not test fly a new Boeing at DFW during the evening rush, would you. Not that the X-prize winner will be flying out of a typical commercial airport, but you get my drift. Other than a launch and recovery facility, i.e., a long runway, describe to me what you think of as "characteristically close." Also, this won't be head to head, and the launches may be weeks and miles apart, unless they wait until the deadline, which they are not doing.
On anouther note:
I'm really bummed that Las Escaleras a las Estrellas in Fort Stockton, Texas, did not make it to the short list. You'd think that a site with no infrastructure, no workforce base from which to draw, and which is considered amazingly corrupt by much of law enforcement would be just the ticket.
Slashdot is more a source of entertainment that actual news on slow days. But you're still here.
It's like there isn't enough going on in the world to fill a 30 minute TV newscast, so they have to tell us that the Weazeldip 5000 isn't all it's cracked up to be so don't buy it.
I would argue that inspite of this, it is Stuff that matters, to us. Maybe we can convince them to make a heading "Olds", instead.
--
I have never met anyone IRL who even knows what Slashdot is. Not that it comes up alot.
You are correct.
Spelling notwithstanding, $2000 is irrelevant if it does not work. The only solution is to make it impossible to SMTP mail without some validation of the sender. This must be done with no expense or unusual hoops to jump through, and let's not let the fascists control this one - you know who I mean.
You can't rely on whitelists; automated blacklists don't work since spammers steal our 'net identity to spam us and others, causing innocents to be blacklisted.
As it is, I could spam all day using postfix or sendmail with a random domain name as the sending domain. This is just crazy. It is in a sense criminal, since my bandwidth is being used without my permission by all of the attachments coming every hour. LIKE I GIVE A RAT'S ASS ABOUT PHARMACEUTICALS, NIGERIA, OR HOT STOCK TIPS!
CAUTION! rant follows:
God Damn It! Get the fuck off the net you cheap-ass cowards. It's like my dog barking at the other dogs until I open the gate - if we can find a way to unmask these spamming motherfuckers, it will stop. (Viral mailings notwithstanding.)
OK, I'm better now.
Nothing at all.
It is posturing, just as we'd do if an American citizen were sentenced harshly in a criminal case overseas. We would not really interfere with the case, but someone from State or Justice would poke their nose in to let them know that we are watching.
And then there is the whole "stop interfering without ability to sell government" thing.
I imagine that what he meant to say was "We didn't really do anything to them, so neither should you, 'cause it will mean that people will realize that we are incompetant boobs who are in the hip pocket of big business." -- excerpt below from excite.com "Justice Dept Worried by Microsoft Ruling Wednesday March 24, 5:46 PM EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department's antitrust chief said on Wednesday that the huge fine European regulators imposed on Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) was "unfortunate" and other sanctions against the company could have "unintended consequences." "Sound antitrust policy must avoid chilling innovation and competition even by 'dominant' companies," Assistant Attorney General Hewitt Pate said in a statement. (C)2004 Reuters Limited. "