Sure, they are still collecting the information. I wonder exactly how they will now be doing it. Perhaps, they will just put taps on the line like they do for calls between countries that do not route via the US? Few would need to know.
The fact that we cannot yet see how or why we woulld mine these bodies is not a good guide to the futue. All advances build on those that went before. Practical, cheap ways to prospect for rare minerals off earth may well be a necesary link in the chain. I would also note that the new technique may be valuable in future rover missions to places like Titan.
Withdraw certain legal rights to make it easier to target them
To make it easier to control them, insist they live in designated areas
Think about a final solution
No... I am not proposing this. I am just terrified this is the direction things are headed. The current hysteria over a few mentally unbalanced fanatics really has me worried. The worst thing that can happen is that the overwhelming majority of Muslims, who are as horrified at the actions of IS as the rest of us, are marginalized and dissuaded from helping in rooting out this menace.
It is not a true Caliphate, because it does not operate according to generally accepted Islamic principles. The rising tide if Islamophobia scares me a lot more than ISIS. The prospect of another holocause in, so called, civilized Western countries is becoming a very real possibility. The fact that the vast majority of Islamic teachers preach against Islamic fundamentalism, in general, and ISIS in particular, is simply ignored. I live in a country with 4 million Muslims and cannot recall a single case of one of them cutting off anyone's head. Indeed, I sometimes buy from a market where the majority of the traders are Muslims, and have never felt in the slightest bit threatened. How many bad experiences with Muslims have you personally experienced? (Please do not say you felt threatened because they dress funny.)
Why does anyone require 'due diligence' and fact-checking against insane violent assholes...
While anger is understandable, taking action, before first verifying that you are targeting the right people, leads all too often to miscarriages of justice. It is sombering to note that, even where some degree of due filigence is done, an estimated 1 in 25 people executed in the US are innocent of the crimes for which they are being executed. A majority of those originally locked up for years in Guantanamo are known to have been innocent. Firm action is needed, but only once you have done your best to ensure you are attacking the right people.
When I learnt Boolean logic, it was called Boolean algebra. I think I can still remember most of the rules.
It is sad that most people cannot apply logic to solving problems. With all the facts at hand, too often irrational conclusions are arrived at. That is probably one of the reasons artificial intelligence is so difficult. We do not know how to model irrationality.
Ubuntu, in the early days, was Debian made easy. You could download and install an early Ubuntu release in about the same time it took you to decide which Debian CDs you needed, and what you probably wanted to install. Of course, for experienced Debian users, Ubuntu offered little new. However, it made the system accessible to the masses.
I am sure the possibility must have been explored that "dark matter" and "dark energy" originate in other dimensions. Is there clear evidence to discount this?
The etymology of words is interesting, but has limited application in deciding correct modern forms and usage. As anyone who knows a little German would recognize, the word "learn" is Germanic in origin, explaining the original past tense of "learnt". The trend is towards using regular English endings in words with Germanic roots. Thus, "learned" has been an acceptable past tense of "learn" in all dialects of English for quite some time. Indeed, apart from in British English, the older form "learnt" has almost died out.
I guess your post is a troll, but I will provide some context anyway
The magnitude 9.0 earthquake off Japan in 2011, the biggest to hit the nation in recorded history, generated a tsunami that was up to 40 m high in a few restricted areas along the coast of Japan itself, but less than 3 m everywhere else the waves reached. A tsunami wave from Toba, North Sumatra would need to travel across the Indian Ocean, around South Africa and up almost the entire South Atlantic ocean into the North Atlantic to hit Cape Verde (literally the equivalent of half way round the world). If, indeed, the tsunami was 170-270 m high when it hit Cape Verde, it is frightening indeed to imagine the height across Asia, East Africa and the Western coasts of the Americas. Indeed, the impact would have been so great that I wonder why evidence has not been found earlier.
I strongly suspect this bug was introduced when they changed the code to support international characters in domain names. At that time, many of the old unit tests will have needed revision. Regression testing is great, but not effective when the required functionality is significantly changed. This is a bad bug, but not a criminal one. Good developers have been guilty of worse.
Big Brother is here to stay. Surveillance tools are being built into the hardware and BIOS. End to end encryption becomes moot when the data is collected at source.
Those buildings were really not designed to protect against that level of failure.
This is incorrect. The twin towers was the first case when the design explicitly considered impact from the largest jet airliner of the time (DC9) fully loaded and the subsequent fire. In fact, we know that two separate studies on this were carried out at the design stage. The conclusion was that the fire would kill but the towers would not collapse.
I take no position on whether additional factors contributed to the collapse. There are so many fanciful theories floating around that it is almost impossible to separate truth from fiction. What I will say is that the investigation was unlike that into any other major failure I have ever witnessed. With both towers failing critical design criteria, one would expect all the evidence to be carefully preserved and a minute examination of the debris to find out why. This is not what happened. Indeed, the initial investigators (from AISC) were not even permitted access to the site for a month, by which time the evidence was already being shipped overseas as quickly as possible. By the time NIST was involved nearly a year later, the vast majority of the steel and other debris had been disposed of.
Given the American penchant for launching lawsuits at the tip of a hat, it is truly amazing that the firms responsible for the design and construction of the towers have never been targeted in civil suits. It would seem that anyone with relatives killed by the collapse would have a prima facie case.
This is yet another demonstration of the rapid advances taking place in both battery technologies and solar panel efficiency. A few years ago, I was not particularly optimistic about the medium term prospects for large scale replacement of coal, gas and nuclear power generation by solar. I am more hopeful today.
What has surprised me is that there has been no real attempt to move the launch platform up to 80,000 feet or so using gas balloon technology. I would have thought this would be feasible, and could result in a substantial fuel saving.
The video criticizes the lack of definition in a high res shot taken of Pluto from 9 million miles away on July 3. Seriously, let's see how much detail we could get of our moon using a small telescope from that kind of distance.
1. Prevent a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. At least Saudi Arabia and possibly other states in the region would have started their own programs if Iran's nuclear program had been allowed to progress towards nuclear weapons. The choices were
* The international community does nothing, leading to this arms race
* Military attacks on Iran, probably by Israel, further destabilizing the region, and strengthening extremist groups
* A negotiated agreement that inhibits nuclear weapons development by Iran, and gives the international community clear warning if Iran moves in that direction.
2. Make it easier to partner with Iran in combating Islamic extremist groups in the region, such as ISIS.
Iran, while no friend of Israel and the US, is no worse than most governments in the region and better than many. With the current mayhem being created by Islamic State and other extremist groups, we cannot afford further destabilization of the region. Hold you nose and support the agreement. It is the best option available.
Sources seem to differ on the Concorde's top speed and maximum cruising speed. As best as I can tell,Concorde's top speed was about Mach 2.02, but its cruising speed was about Mach 1.8
The patent has generated fears of what might happen if an aircraft containing radioactive material as fuel were to crash...
This kind of patent on a general concept acts as a string disincentive to others to invest the resources needed to turn such concepts into practical implementations. Usually, that is undesirable. In this case, some seem to believe strongly that the concept should not be pursued. These people should be celebrating.
First, Iceland did not default on its sovereign debt. Thus, although the consequences I outline below are considerable, they are not as severe as those Greece can expect. The large Icelandic banks failed. They grew far too large on the basis of short term borrowing and speculation in leveraged property assets. This was not Icelandic government debt. However, the Iceland central bank did not have the resources to act as lender of last resort and had to allow the banks to go bankrupt and be restructured. International creditors of the banks ended up being shafted, and international arbitration confirmed the Iceland bankruptcy court's right to impose this, even though domestic creditors were protected.
Now for the relatively limited consequences. The capitalization of the Iceland stock market fell 90%. The country was in recession from 2007-2010. Capital controls were imposed that are still in force. 1-2% of the country's population demonstrated regularly and vigorously, forcing the government's resignation.
For Iceland, this was not totally catastrophic, although unpleasant. Greece, with huge sovereign debts already in partial default, will be in no position to restore the banking system following a collapse. Without a deal with its creditors, the economy is going to completely grind to a halt. Aid agencies are going to need to set up soup kitchens and provide health care. I anticipate a dual currency system. The euro will still be used for international transactions, but euros will be extremely scarce and access to them subject to strict government control. Bank deposits will be forcibly converted to drachmas at a notional 1:1 exchange rate. The drachma to euro exchange rate on the black market will quickly rise to tens, hundreds or thousands to one. Inflation will become a severe or catastrophic problem.
Note that with all the costs of restoring the banking system and stimulating the economy to recover from the recession, Iceland's sovereign debt-to-GDP ratio never exceeded 85% and is now down to a very manageable 60%.
I think much of your analogy is flawed, but accepting it at face value, the correct move now is to sell the house that is inappropriate for the family's financial circumstances, and move into an apartment or much smaller house. If this solution is refused, the creditors (in this situation, I am sure the family has other debts) are within their rights to seize the family's assets, including the house, and leave the family to fester.
In most countries, there is a bankruptcy process that can ameliorate the consequences somewhat. There is no bankruptcy process for countries so, if they upset their creditors too much, they can expect truly unpleasant consequences.
Valid point on the acknowledged $1,000,000,000,000 program cost. I would only point out that this cost will inevitably increase over time if the program continues.
Your assumption that the US economy will continue to steadily grow over the next 20 odd years is not conservative, but arguably optimistic.
Whether the F-35 is a powerful weapon is open to debate. Certainly, one could question whether the money could be better spent elsewhere. For instance, a trillion dollars will buy about 250,000 Predator drones.
There is some ceiling on US military spending beyond which they will not be allowed to go. This portion of this for weapons needs to be split in some manner between weapons necessary to enforce US foreign policy, and weapons spending with domestic political benefits. At the time the JSF boondoggle was getting underway, it seemed the US would be facing weak opposition in conflicts. That allowed spending on combat weapons to be restricted, and more to be allocated towards pork barrel projects like the JSF. Indeed, with less projected need for weapons used in warmongering, projects like the JSF were important to keep military spending near its permitted ceiling. The situation is now a bit different. To support US foreign policy, a credible deterrent against a resurgent Russia and increasingly aggressive China is now needed. The JSF may need to go to free up cash for real weapons systems.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, they are still collecting the information. I wonder exactly how they will now be doing it. Perhaps, they will just put taps on the line like they do for calls between countries that do not route via the US? Few would need to know.
The fact that we cannot yet see how or why we woulld mine these bodies is not a good guide to the futue. All advances build on those that went before. Practical, cheap ways to prospect for rare minerals off earth may well be a necesary link in the chain. I would also note that the new technique may be valuable in future rover missions to places like Titan.
No ... I am not proposing this. I am just terrified this is the direction things are headed. The current hysteria over a few mentally unbalanced fanatics really has me worried. The worst thing that can happen is that the overwhelming majority of Muslims, who are as horrified at the actions of IS as the rest of us, are marginalized and dissuaded from helping in rooting out this menace.
It is not a true Caliphate, because it does not operate according to generally accepted Islamic principles. The rising tide if Islamophobia scares me a lot more than ISIS. The prospect of another holocause in, so called, civilized Western countries is becoming a very real possibility. The fact that the vast majority of Islamic teachers preach against Islamic fundamentalism, in general, and ISIS in particular, is simply ignored. I live in a country with 4 million Muslims and cannot recall a single case of one of them cutting off anyone's head. Indeed, I sometimes buy from a market where the majority of the traders are Muslims, and have never felt in the slightest bit threatened. How many bad experiences with Muslims have you personally experienced? (Please do not say you felt threatened because they dress funny.)
While anger is understandable, taking action, before first verifying that you are targeting the right people, leads all too often to miscarriages of justice. It is sombering to note that, even where some degree of due filigence is done, an estimated 1 in 25 people executed in the US are innocent of the crimes for which they are being executed. A majority of those originally locked up for years in Guantanamo are known to have been innocent. Firm action is needed, but only once you have done your best to ensure you are attacking the right people.
When I learnt Boolean logic, it was called Boolean algebra. I think I can still remember most of the rules.
It is sad that most people cannot apply logic to solving problems. With all the facts at hand, too often irrational conclusions are arrived at. That is probably one of the reasons artificial intelligence is so difficult. We do not know how to model irrationality.
Ubuntu, in the early days, was Debian made easy. You could download and install an early Ubuntu release in about the same time it took you to decide which Debian CDs you needed, and what you probably wanted to install. Of course, for experienced Debian users, Ubuntu offered little new. However, it made the system accessible to the masses.
I am sure the possibility must have been explored that "dark matter" and "dark energy" originate in other dimensions. Is there clear evidence to discount this?
Yes, a wiki combined with something like Google site search makes the information maintainable, and accommodates unanticipated queries very well.
The etymology of words is interesting, but has limited application in deciding correct modern forms and usage. As anyone who knows a little German would recognize, the word "learn" is Germanic in origin, explaining the original past tense of "learnt". The trend is towards using regular English endings in words with Germanic roots. Thus, "learned" has been an acceptable past tense of "learn" in all dialects of English for quite some time. Indeed, apart from in British English, the older form "learnt" has almost died out.
I guess your post is a troll, but I will provide some context anyway
The magnitude 9.0 earthquake off Japan in 2011, the biggest to hit the nation in recorded history, generated a tsunami that was up to 40 m high in a few restricted areas along the coast of Japan itself, but less than 3 m everywhere else the waves reached. A tsunami wave from Toba, North Sumatra would need to travel across the Indian Ocean, around South Africa and up almost the entire South Atlantic ocean into the North Atlantic to hit Cape Verde (literally the equivalent of half way round the world). If, indeed, the tsunami was 170-270 m high when it hit Cape Verde, it is frightening indeed to imagine the height across Asia, East Africa and the Western coasts of the Americas. Indeed, the impact would have been so great that I wonder why evidence has not been found earlier.
I strongly suspect this bug was introduced when they changed the code to support international characters in domain names. At that time, many of the old unit tests will have needed revision. Regression testing is great, but not effective when the required functionality is significantly changed. This is a bad bug, but not a criminal one. Good developers have been guilty of worse.
Big Brother is here to stay. Surveillance tools are being built into the hardware and BIOS. End to end encryption becomes moot when the data is collected at source.
Those buildings were really not designed to protect against that level of failure.
This is incorrect. The twin towers was the first case when the design explicitly considered impact from the largest jet airliner of the time (DC9) fully loaded and the subsequent fire. In fact, we know that two separate studies on this were carried out at the design stage. The conclusion was that the fire would kill but the towers would not collapse.
I take no position on whether additional factors contributed to the collapse. There are so many fanciful theories floating around that it is almost impossible to separate truth from fiction. What I will say is that the investigation was unlike that into any other major failure I have ever witnessed. With both towers failing critical design criteria, one would expect all the evidence to be carefully preserved and a minute examination of the debris to find out why. This is not what happened. Indeed, the initial investigators (from AISC) were not even permitted access to the site for a month, by which time the evidence was already being shipped overseas as quickly as possible. By the time NIST was involved nearly a year later, the vast majority of the steel and other debris had been disposed of.
Given the American penchant for launching lawsuits at the tip of a hat, it is truly amazing that the firms responsible for the design and construction of the towers have never been targeted in civil suits. It would seem that anyone with relatives killed by the collapse would have a prima facie case.
This is yet another demonstration of the rapid advances taking place in both battery technologies and solar panel efficiency. A few years ago, I was not particularly optimistic about the medium term prospects for large scale replacement of coal, gas and nuclear power generation by solar. I am more hopeful today.
What has surprised me is that there has been no real attempt to move the launch platform up to 80,000 feet or so using gas balloon technology. I would have thought this would be feasible, and could result in a substantial fuel saving.
The video criticizes the lack of definition in a high res shot taken of Pluto from 9 million miles away on July 3. Seriously, let's see how much detail we could get of our moon using a small telescope from that kind of distance.
There are two key objectives in the agreement
Iran, while no friend of Israel and the US, is no worse than most governments in the region and better than many. With the current mayhem being created by Islamic State and other extremist groups, we cannot afford further destabilization of the region. Hold you nose and support the agreement. It is the best option available.
The main speed limitation was caused by the desire to use aluminium. Heat build up above Mach 2 would have required other materials.
Sources seem to differ on the Concorde's top speed and maximum cruising speed. As best as I can tell,Concorde's top speed was about Mach 2.02, but its cruising speed was about Mach 1.8
This kind of patent on a general concept acts as a string disincentive to others to invest the resources needed to turn such concepts into practical implementations. Usually, that is undesirable. In this case, some seem to believe strongly that the concept should not be pursued. These people should be celebrating.
First, Iceland did not default on its sovereign debt. Thus, although the consequences I outline below are considerable, they are not as severe as those Greece can expect. The large Icelandic banks failed. They grew far too large on the basis of short term borrowing and speculation in leveraged property assets. This was not Icelandic government debt. However, the Iceland central bank did not have the resources to act as lender of last resort and had to allow the banks to go bankrupt and be restructured. International creditors of the banks ended up being shafted, and international arbitration confirmed the Iceland bankruptcy court's right to impose this, even though domestic creditors were protected.
Now for the relatively limited consequences. The capitalization of the Iceland stock market fell 90%. The country was in recession from 2007-2010. Capital controls were imposed that are still in force. 1-2% of the country's population demonstrated regularly and vigorously, forcing the government's resignation.
For Iceland, this was not totally catastrophic, although unpleasant. Greece, with huge sovereign debts already in partial default, will be in no position to restore the banking system following a collapse. Without a deal with its creditors, the economy is going to completely grind to a halt. Aid agencies are going to need to set up soup kitchens and provide health care. I anticipate a dual currency system. The euro will still be used for international transactions, but euros will be extremely scarce and access to them subject to strict government control. Bank deposits will be forcibly converted to drachmas at a notional 1:1 exchange rate. The drachma to euro exchange rate on the black market will quickly rise to tens, hundreds or thousands to one. Inflation will become a severe or catastrophic problem.
Note that with all the costs of restoring the banking system and stimulating the economy to recover from the recession, Iceland's sovereign debt-to-GDP ratio never exceeded 85% and is now down to a very manageable 60%.
I think much of your analogy is flawed, but accepting it at face value, the correct move now is to sell the house that is inappropriate for the family's financial circumstances, and move into an apartment or much smaller house. If this solution is refused, the creditors (in this situation, I am sure the family has other debts) are within their rights to seize the family's assets, including the house, and leave the family to fester.
In most countries, there is a bankruptcy process that can ameliorate the consequences somewhat. There is no bankruptcy process for countries so, if they upset their creditors too much, they can expect truly unpleasant consequences.
Valid point on the acknowledged $1,000,000,000,000 program cost. I would only point out that this cost will inevitably increase over time if the program continues.
Your assumption that the US economy will continue to steadily grow over the next 20 odd years is not conservative, but arguably optimistic.
Whether the F-35 is a powerful weapon is open to debate. Certainly, one could question whether the money could be better spent elsewhere. For instance, a trillion dollars will buy about 250,000 Predator drones.
There is some ceiling on US military spending beyond which they will not be allowed to go. This portion of this for weapons needs to be split in some manner between weapons necessary to enforce US foreign policy, and weapons spending with domestic political benefits. At the time the JSF boondoggle was getting underway, it seemed the US would be facing weak opposition in conflicts. That allowed spending on combat weapons to be restricted, and more to be allocated towards pork barrel projects like the JSF. Indeed, with less projected need for weapons used in warmongering, projects like the JSF were important to keep military spending near its permitted ceiling. The situation is now a bit different. To support US foreign policy, a credible deterrent against a resurgent Russia and increasingly aggressive China is now needed. The JSF may need to go to free up cash for real weapons systems.