Regarding swords: While it's frowned upon in most places the practice is not prohibited in most of the US. On a lark one Halloween I wore a quite real, very sharp sword and carried a quite functional recurve bow with broadpoint arrows to the nightclub dressed as Robin Hood. A drunken idiot nearly made it necessary to use them so I don't recommend people doing this even for fun. It all worked out in the end though, and it wasn't illegal. It was some time ago. Most clubs won't let you in any more if your costume includes real weapons for liability reasons. I don't go to the nightclub any more anyway. Naturally at public gatherings of the Society for Creative Anachronism being without some medieval weapon would make you stand out if your role required one. Swords are sold at the convenience store nearest my home. They can be found nearly everywhere. They are quite popular as domestic ornaments.
Regarding firearms: I recall a press report where some small towns instituted a curfew that required women to be armed when out after dark. Although prosecutions for going unarmed seem unlikely the incidence of rape in public places is somewhat diminished. This recent story is about a town with an ordinance proposed that requires a firearm in every home http://www.fox12news.com/Global/story.asp?S=543703 3 . Several towns require this. Here's an older story about one in Georgia with rather predictable results: http://tinyurl.com/yldlze . From that article:
After the law went into effect in 1982, crime against persons plummeted 74 percent compared to 1981, and fell another 45 percent in 1983 compared to 1982. And it has stayed impressively low.
Numerically, there are about as many firearms in America as there are Americans : http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/2006/08/16/almos t-every-american-has-a-gun/ . I recall seeing pistols, rifles and shotguns on sale in a gas station in Flagstaff, Arizona. While product placement right next to the tequila was probably inappropriate, the sight was not shocking to the locals.
Are citizens not allowed arms in your country? Why? What could possibly be the reason for that?
From reports in the media one would be led to believe that individuals with improvised and small munitions are competing quite successfully against numerous, well equipped, highly trained and well motivated soldiers in at least one current theater of operations.
Apparently Verizon and whiny liberals are both bad at math.
Don't get me wrong -- I love and respect our soldiers. That so many step up to do their duty gives me hope that America may yet survive. But statistically far more Americans are killed by medical accident, influenza, a host of other causes.
Let's not pretend that for an American going to war is more dangerous than commuting on the freeway. It was so once, but it isn't any more.
If you want to be honest and still win points with Hanoi Jane, argue that it costs money. That at least is true.
This lets MA save some face when it comes to dropping OpenOffice format for this nonsense. Not that it's really necessary, since Microsoft got their mouthpiece appointed as an IT advisor be being generous to the successful candidate for governor.
Members who have not taken part in the technical work on a Standard are encouraged to vote in its favour in the General Assembly. The provisions of clause 2 of the Code of Conduct are not intended to discourage such supportive action and, therefore, do not require members to undertaken a detailed patent search in this situation. However, known rights should be claimed.
So if a majority of the members (see the list above) didn't work on a Standard, they're encouraged to vote in favor of it. Since the majority of that list has no interest in Office document minutiae, adoption of whatever standard Microsoft proposed seems predictable. Further, if they can't get a company to commit to being reasonable about licensing their patents, they assume the company will be reasonable at least to the other members (see that list again).
The quote in the summary was from TFA and was correct.
Your guidance is wrong. "Probably" means more likely than not. According to Microsoft's own statistics Fred's XP workstation is "probably" a rooted, keylogging spambot zombie. His files safe? Get real.
On the other hand, your machine is "probably" exploited already too, so why not just give up? Everyone else has. It's not like anybody wants to read your boring data anyway, right? Besides, what are we to do? If we can't use Office, we might as well give up and go home. We can just keep clicking away those popups until the machine slows down so much it won't function at all and then Ted from IT will fix it. You didn't really like google anyway -- that targeted search assistant is so much better at finding just the right thing. It's like it knows you.
The OpenXML format includes technologies developed and patented by Microsoft. Even if this code were in the Public Domain, MS could still sue you for using it. That's the point of this whole exercise: To blur the meaning of "free" and "open". To get you to go for a ride on their submarine. Apparently the code in this sourceforge project is C#, so more patents are involved.
In fact, this SDMA turns out to have been Sendo's death warrant. As the company explains:
"Under the SDMA, in the event of a Sendo bankruptcy, Microsoft would obtain an irrevocable, royalty free license to use Sendo's Z100 intellectual property, including rights to make, use, or copy the Sendo Smartphone to create other to create other Smartphones and to, most importantly for Microsoft, sublicense those rights to third parties."
Now doesn't all the paranoia start to make sense? This is how they are reported to treat their friends. Now after you can't get their web page at http://www.sendo.com/ to load, check out their article on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendo .
Let me see what I can say about this that doesn't get me on some list...
If they admit the satellite has 1m resolution, it can read license plates. If they say it sees thermal events, it knows when you're getting busy. If Intel says they're at a 65nm node, satellites are launching at 17nm.
I first met self-aware hardware in the '80s. I assume development has developed apace. The only thing surprising about this report is that some people consider it surprising. Our only saving grace at this point is that the wonks that manage these programs don't see their potential for abuse.
Does it run linux? Don't be silly. They can do much better than that.
You miss the fact that the most important purpose of government is to deplete the excess productivity. In a sense, revenue sucking pork projects motivate the populace to produce more in order to pay their taxes rather than develop civil unrest.
Unfortunately in the long term blue-sky, pure research always pays dividends much greater than money invested in other ways by making people more productive or resources more plentiful and thus increases the burden of surplus productivity to be depleted. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Exactly. This is only one of many plausible theories about how current life could escape the earth in the present day. Another is impact displacement, where a meteorite or comet strike hits hard enough to eject surface material out of the Earth's gravity well, complete with colonies of organisms. This is known to have happened on Earth several times in the past while life was abundant. High in the atmosphere mold spores become so dry their electrostatic properties can become more of an issue than their mass. Volcanic eruptions can create plumes so high a low flying meteor can pass through them without bouncing off the atmosphere. There are other theories but we really are not creative enough to think of all the ways this might happen. I suspect that planethopping life is much like hacking the vote -- if it is possible at all some germ will find a way.
I have read there are bacteria that use the radiation of natural nuclear reactors as an energy source (so much for interstellar radiation being a problem). I believe their waste products and the heat generated support large colonies of more conventional organisms. All of this occurs far beneath the ground where the photosynthetic chain is not a factor and the reactors have been present since the formation of the Earth. So much for the cold vacuum of space though I don't think that's as much an issue as many seem to. For complex organisms like us yes, but for "any life"? I think not. I do wonder how those reactor bacteria got to where they are, to evolve into what they are, miles below the surface across boundaries no self-respecting microbe would travel. I believe the reactor bacteria are a recent discovery. How thoroughly have we searched this planet we know so well that we're still finding new and different forms of life? It seems to me that a cumulative few man days less a few hours for golf hardly constitutes a thorough search.
GP mentioned life falling on planets. My original post didn't specify that, though of course some of the stuff that bounces off Earth does fall on other bodies I would think most of it does not.
The topic is about pre-solar system organics anyway so let's rejoin the topic: If organic compounds (link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_compound ) are so common among the stars and apparently in this meteorite sample as astronomers would have us believe, what causes them to be so common? Are carbon and hydrogen that attracted to each other or is there some phase of nova/supernova/whatever that causes their creation in proximity to each other? Perhaps there's some sorting process that extracts other material but doesn't affect organic compounds, on a cosmic level? I don't know the science on this one and would be glad for some pointers.
Every day millions of micrometeors bounce off of the atmosphere and spin off into space. Many of them dip low enough to scoop up some life on their way by. Many forms of life on Earth can withstand space including mold spores which, BTW, are present high in the atmosphere where micrometeors can scoop them up. Lichens can survive under remarkably hostile conditions, and grow in many. And that's just accounting for the forms of life that are commonly understood and known to be present. Some definitions of "life" allow for rather less familiar configurations.
I figure the reason why we haven't yet found evidence of life outside of earth is that we haven't properly looked. The cursory and remote search conducted this far could hardly be considered justification for a proper search warrant if we were looking for evidence of a minor crime. For something this much more important a far more thorough look is justified before we call a lack of evidence evidence of lack.
None of this has to do with TFA. The speculation at this point is, I believe, that the meteorite wherein the mysterious material is found comes from the oort cloud and thus predates the solar system. That would make it remnants of a supernova ~6 billion years ago or so, or something even stranger. Even the investigators aren't calling it life.
The life or not question aside, this article is a reminder. Our solar system is crossing through the plane of the Milky Way galaxy, as it does every 40 million years or so. Things from outside our solar system are known to fall on the Earth when this happens, as this one did. Not all of these things can be described as small. Perhaps coincidentally, every 40 million years some unpleasantness occurs in the fossil record. Hopefully someone, somewhere, is considering these facts as a collection.
Attributed to Anaxagoras ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaxagoras ) in the 5th century BCE. Basically the idea the precursors to life are everywhere in the universe, allowing that life on earth may have sprung from this source.
It seems plausible. This evidence doesn't prove it though.
FTA:
The structures are invisible to the naked eye and resemble minute hollow balls with carbon-rich shells. A chunk of meteorite no larger than a grape could contain a billion of the tiny globules.
Fullerene? That would explain a lot about the persistence of these structures through the process of transport and reentry.
Disclaimer: "God moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform." - William Cowper ( for varying values of "God", "mysterious", "wonders" - symbolset )
Ok, the Vole has been astroturfing slashdot for a long time now. You guys are supposed to be trained and experienced.
Now look at your post. It's not supposed to be obvious that you're sitting in on marketing's talking point meetings. You're not supposed to just truncate the pitch into a posting and submit your link for credit. It has to look like an honest person made the judgement for himself, or the messaging works in reverse.
Please try again, and next time for goodness sake at least misspell something.
Slashdot Mirror
Regarding firearms: I recall a press report where some small towns instituted a curfew that required women to be armed when out after dark. Although prosecutions for going unarmed seem unlikely the incidence of rape in public places is somewhat diminished. This recent story is about a town with an ordinance proposed that requires a firearm in every home http://www.fox12news.com/Global/story.asp?S=543703 3 . Several towns require this. Here's an older story about one in Georgia with rather predictable results: http://tinyurl.com/yldlze . From that article:
Numerically, there are about as many firearms in America as there are Americans : http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/2006/08/16/almos t-every-american-has-a-gun/ . I recall seeing pistols, rifles and shotguns on sale in a gas station in Flagstaff, Arizona. While product placement right next to the tequila was probably inappropriate, the sight was not shocking to the locals.
Are citizens not allowed arms in your country? Why? What could possibly be the reason for that?
You can't have it both ways.
Apparently Verizon and whiny liberals are both bad at math.
Don't get me wrong -- I love and respect our soldiers. That so many step up to do their duty gives me hope that America may yet survive. But statistically far more Americans are killed by medical accident, influenza, a host of other causes.
Let's not pretend that for an American going to war is more dangerous than commuting on the freeway. It was so once, but it isn't any more.
If you want to be honest and still win points with Hanoi Jane, argue that it costs money. That at least is true.
Anyway here's how the ECMA feels about patents: http://www.ecma-international.org/memento/codeofco nduct.htm . Note the liberal use of the word "should" and "reasonable". It seems unlikely the members of the ECMA who vote on such things, the ordinary members (list: http://www.ecma-international.org/memento/ordinary .htm ) have the same understanding of those words than you or I do. Even if they did, there's an escape clause:
So if a majority of the members (see the list above) didn't work on a Standard, they're encouraged to vote in favor of it. Since the majority of that list has no interest in Office document minutiae, adoption of whatever standard Microsoft proposed seems predictable. Further, if they can't get a company to commit to being reasonable about licensing their patents, they assume the company will be reasonable at least to the other members (see that list again).
Anyway, if you don't care about patents, here's a list http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/sta ndards/Standard.htm of their standards.
But I can't read the terms, because it's a secret. And they don't agree in public on what, exactly, the deal was.
Boy, am I relieved!
The quote in the summary was from TFA and was correct.
Your guidance is wrong. "Probably" means more likely than not. According to Microsoft's own statistics Fred's XP workstation is "probably" a rooted, keylogging spambot zombie. His files safe? Get real.
On the other hand, your machine is "probably" exploited already too, so why not just give up? Everyone else has. It's not like anybody wants to read your boring data anyway, right? Besides, what are we to do? If we can't use Office, we might as well give up and go home. We can just keep clicking away those popups until the machine slows down so much it won't function at all and then Ted from IT will fix it. You didn't really like google anyway -- that targeted search assistant is so much better at finding just the right thing. It's like it knows you.
Never mind.
disconnect the triprong MS Virus Enabler: http://www.techexcess.net/images/products/600/6ft- power-cord.jpg
Not opening Word files seems like a good idea. Microsoft IP's in them, and that's icky.
You forgot to mention the Vista sound. The put tons of effort into that.
Let's look at how they dealt with Sendo, a company that partnered with them to help them get into the clubby smartphone biz, ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/01/06/microsofts _masterplan_to_screw_phone/ ):
Now doesn't all the paranoia start to make sense? This is how they are reported to treat their friends. Now after you can't get their web page at http://www.sendo.com/ to load, check out their article on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendo .
Let me see what I can say about this that doesn't get me on some list...
If they admit the satellite has 1m resolution, it can read license plates. If they say it sees thermal events, it knows when you're getting busy. If Intel says they're at a 65nm node, satellites are launching at 17nm.
I first met self-aware hardware in the '80s. I assume development has developed apace. The only thing surprising about this report is that some people consider it surprising. Our only saving grace at this point is that the wonks that manage these programs don't see their potential for abuse.
Does it run linux? Don't be silly. They can do much better than that.
What would the Useless Nations have to do with this?
Unfortunately in the long term blue-sky, pure research always pays dividends much greater than money invested in other ways by making people more productive or resources more plentiful and thus increases the burden of surplus productivity to be depleted. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Now go teach an Origami course for penance.
Is that because intelligence is not required for this function, it is not present. A logical fallacy.
Remember, the volcano is no threat to the satellite. In terms its self-awareness, there was no cause for concern.
Exactly. This is only one of many plausible theories about how current life could escape the earth in the present day. Another is impact displacement, where a meteorite or comet strike hits hard enough to eject surface material out of the Earth's gravity well, complete with colonies of organisms. This is known to have happened on Earth several times in the past while life was abundant. High in the atmosphere mold spores become so dry their electrostatic properties can become more of an issue than their mass. Volcanic eruptions can create plumes so high a low flying meteor can pass through them without bouncing off the atmosphere. There are other theories but we really are not creative enough to think of all the ways this might happen. I suspect that planethopping life is much like hacking the vote -- if it is possible at all some germ will find a way.
I have read there are bacteria that use the radiation of natural nuclear reactors as an energy source (so much for interstellar radiation being a problem). I believe their waste products and the heat generated support large colonies of more conventional organisms. All of this occurs far beneath the ground where the photosynthetic chain is not a factor and the reactors have been present since the formation of the Earth. So much for the cold vacuum of space though I don't think that's as much an issue as many seem to. For complex organisms like us yes, but for "any life"? I think not. I do wonder how those reactor bacteria got to where they are, to evolve into what they are, miles below the surface across boundaries no self-respecting microbe would travel. I believe the reactor bacteria are a recent discovery. How thoroughly have we searched this planet we know so well that we're still finding new and different forms of life? It seems to me that a cumulative few man days less a few hours for golf hardly constitutes a thorough search.
GP mentioned life falling on planets. My original post didn't specify that, though of course some of the stuff that bounces off Earth does fall on other bodies I would think most of it does not.
The topic is about pre-solar system organics anyway so let's rejoin the topic: If organic compounds (link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_compound ) are so common among the stars and apparently in this meteorite sample as astronomers would have us believe, what causes them to be so common? Are carbon and hydrogen that attracted to each other or is there some phase of nova/supernova/whatever that causes their creation in proximity to each other? Perhaps there's some sorting process that extracts other material but doesn't affect organic compounds, on a cosmic level? I don't know the science on this one and would be glad for some pointers.
--- If it harm none do what you will shall be the whole of the law.
I figure the reason why we haven't yet found evidence of life outside of earth is that we haven't properly looked. The cursory and remote search conducted this far could hardly be considered justification for a proper search warrant if we were looking for evidence of a minor crime. For something this much more important a far more thorough look is justified before we call a lack of evidence evidence of lack.
None of this has to do with TFA. The speculation at this point is, I believe, that the meteorite wherein the mysterious material is found comes from the oort cloud and thus predates the solar system. That would make it remnants of a supernova ~6 billion years ago or so, or something even stranger. Even the investigators aren't calling it life.
The life or not question aside, this article is a reminder. Our solar system is crossing through the plane of the Milky Way galaxy, as it does every 40 million years or so. Things from outside our solar system are known to fall on the Earth when this happens, as this one did. Not all of these things can be described as small. Perhaps coincidentally, every 40 million years some unpleasantness occurs in the fossil record. Hopefully someone, somewhere, is considering these facts as a collection.
Attributed to Anaxagoras ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaxagoras ) in the 5th century BCE. Basically the idea the precursors to life are everywhere in the universe, allowing that life on earth may have sprung from this source.
It seems plausible. This evidence doesn't prove it though.
FTA:
Fullerene? That would explain a lot about the persistence of these structures through the process of transport and reentry.
Disclaimer: "God moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform." - William Cowper ( for varying values of "God", "mysterious", "wonders" - symbolset )
At Columbine 15 people died. Compare and contrast with the numbers in these stories.
Perhaps a plea for less hyperbole is out of place in a thread with this much political slant, but I can hope.
Since you mention the view from the outside, this is interesting - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Pakistan :
In modern times that a culture is so closed to outsiders that "little is known" about such an important subject is itself telling.
With a screwdriver on the LCD. The coincidence is astounding. His improvements are going to cost me $500 also.
The similarities do end, though. He's only three. His fumbling attempts are charming. There's some hope his skills will improve.
Ok, the Vole has been astroturfing slashdot for a long time now. You guys are supposed to be trained and experienced.
Now look at your post. It's not supposed to be obvious that you're sitting in on marketing's talking point meetings. You're not supposed to just truncate the pitch into a posting and submit your link for credit. It has to look like an honest person made the judgement for himself, or the messaging works in reverse.
Please try again, and next time for goodness sake at least misspell something.
http://forum.ev1servers.net/showthread.php?s=&thre adid=42270&perpage=25&pagenumber=1
It didn't work out well for Robert Marsh, but at least his company survived.
Like a hand from the sky...
Novell needed to do some due diligence before they entered this deal. So sad. Where will all their engineers go?